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Pro soccer player 25 dies of heart attack mid-game. Can it happen to anyone?

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W

woober

Member
I don't know much about soccer, but I'd imagine pro players are physically fit, especially cardiovascularly. Maybe he had a past medical history or has family members who have a genetic predisposition for a heart attack that I do not know about.

Seeing this on the news caught my attention because it makes me wonder if it could happen to anyone. From my pre-med studies, I recall learning that clots from other parts of the body may travel to the heart.

This feels like a case of diagnosing yourself on Web-MD and then discovering you have every disease possible.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U9CSR8x5bM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/...-morosini-collapses-during-game?newsfeed=true

Livorno midfielder Piermario Morosini has died after suffering cardiac arrest during his team's Serie B match at Pescara on Saturday. Morosini's death was confirmed by Dr Edoardo De Blasio, a cardiologist at Pescara's Santo Spirito hospital, who said: "unfortunately he was already dead when he arrived at hospital. He didn't regain consciousness."

All Italian football league matches this weekend have now been suspended as a mark of respect.

Morosini, 25, was given urgent medical attention on the pitch after collapsing after 31 minutes of the match. A defibrillator was also used before Morosini was rushed to Pescara's Santo Spirito hospital.

The Associated Press reported that the player was conscious when he was stretchered off the pitch but was put into a medically induced coma at the hospital. Italian news agency Ansa reported that Morosini suffered a heart attack in the ambulance.

"He looked at me in the eyes when he was taken into the ambulance," Pescara's general manager, Danilo Iannascoli, told Sky Italia.

Italian media reports said a car belonging to traffic police blocked the ambulance's way into the stadium and a window had to be broken so the car could be moved.

"I don't know if the ambulance was late, but I know that the entrance onto the pitch was blocked by a vehicle," Iannascoli said. "Morosini collapsed, he tried to get back up but then collapsed again."

The match was called off, with many of the other players leaving the field in tears.
Click to expand...
 
M

mugurumakensei

Member
It's called everything in moderation. Overdoing exercise can kill you. However, a professional athlete pretty much has to accept thet may die young. It's one of the reasons they get high.pay even outside of the amount of money sports pull in.
 
Emerson

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
I'd need to read more actual medical information to really comment on it, but often this kind of thing is a congenital defect of some sort that leads to sudden death at high levels of exertion. Sports physicals are supposed to pick up on stuff like that but they do get missed sometimes and every once in a while you'll hear of a young athlete dying suddenly from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or Marfan syndrome or something similar. The takehome message would be that there are ways to pick up on these things and not to skimp on medical screening if you want to play sports at a high level.

Edit: Reading the article again it doesn't totally sound like this is what happened, but the term "heart attack" in this context is too vague to really speculate on.
 
I

IceCold

Member
Usually this is the cause of a heart defect of some kind. Unless you get your doctor to look at your heart specifically for that problem it will go unnoticed until it's too late. But this type of stuff is quite rare. I can only thing of handful of cases where a player has died on the pitch.
 
S

starchild excalibur

Member
Heart attacks can happen at any age. If you ever experience the symptoms, but think "Shit, I'm only 20, no biggie" - don't. I've heard of it happening specifically in soccer at young ages, but it happens well outside of that in people who are neither as physically fit as soccer players nor as unfit as even fat or obese people.
 
J

Juicy Bob

Member
Horrible. Just horrible. Especially thinking back to Muamba and how that incident had a happy ending.

That's two major occurances in European football in less than a month.
 
J

Joni

Member
Happens a lot to soccer players. Quite logical, it is 90 minutes of small sprints which causes a lot of stress on the heart. Has nothing to do with their physical state, it is just a genetic disease which is aggrevated by their frequent exercise.
 
A

alphaNoid

Banned
Watching that video was morbid because you can see him dying right there on the field. One minute alive, then struggling to stand, then gone forever. No chance to say goodbye :/
 
B

Berto

Member
Never forget =(
260px-Mikl%C3%B3s_Feh%C3%A9r.jpg
 
Hari Seldon

Hari Seldon

Member
They defibed him and he still died? Wow. You can't possibly have more immediate access to trained professionals than as a professional athlete.
 
M

MattKeil

BIGTIME TV MOGUL #2
Hari Seldon said:
They defibed him and he still died? Wow. You can't possibly have more immediate access to trained professionals than as a professional athlete.
Click to expand...

A defibrillator can't restart a stopped heart like in the movies. All it can do is try to shock the heart into going back into its normal rhythm. If it's too far gone, it's too far gone.
 
Hari Seldon

Hari Seldon

Member
MattKeil said:
A defibrillator can't restart a stopped heart like in the movies. All it can do is try to shock the heart into going back into its normal rhythm. If it's too far gone, it's too far gone.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I read here that the defibrillator worked and he regained conciousness. Maybe I am misreadiing this?

Morosini, who was on loan from Udinese, fell to the ground in the 31st minute of the match and tried unsuccessfully to get up before receiving urgent medical attention on the pitch. A defibrillator was used on the player, and he was conscious when he was stretchered off the pitch.
Click to expand...
 
S

Suairyu

Banned
MattKeil said:
A defibrillator can't restart a stopped heart like in the movies. All it can do is try to shock the heart into going back into its normal rhythm. If it's too far gone, it's too far gone.
Click to expand...
I'd absolutely love to know where the "defibs shock the heart back into working!" meme came from because it's been around forever and it drives me up the fucking wall. It's legitimately dangerous levels of misinformation.
 
LoganKnight4949

LoganKnight4949

Member
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy is one of the most common causes of death in young athletes. Although only a very small percentage of people have it. Screening is seldom done to it. I wonder if that's what he had.
 
R

robertsan21

Member
Well its obvious that these football players are taking some sort of steriod, there has been to many heart attacks these last years in football for it to be some random accident.

Unfortunately nobody is intrested in finding out what exactly they are giving the players, or if players are taking this stuff themselfs.

When a club buys a player they go through quite a lot of tests to make sure they are fit.
 
T

The_Hitcher89

Member
robertsan21 said:
Well its obvious that these football players are taking some sort of steriod, there has been to many heart attacks these last years in football for it to be some random accident.

Unfortunately nobody is intrested in finding out what exactly they are giving the players, or if players are taking this stuff themselfs.

When a club buys a player they go through quite a lot of tests to make sure they are fit.
Click to expand...

Players also run and vigorously exercise far more in modern times, in football at least.
 
B

Broder Salsa

Banned
Terrible news. Saw the video which I clearly shouldn't, poor guy.

robertsan21 said:
Well its obvious that these football players are taking some sort of steriod, there has been to many heart attacks these last years in football for it to be some random accident.
Click to expand...


Really now? There's thousand of matches with 22 players playing each week, it's not that strange that there's heart attacks every so often, especially when they put their hearts under extreme amounts of stress. Would like to see any evidence if you got any other than "it happens so much that it must be doping" though.

Btw yes the clubs to do test the players when they are bought but a hell lot don't check the heart. We only just recently made it mandatory here to do it for all pro clubs.
 
D

Deleted member 81567

Unconfirmed Member
I remember when this happened to Puerta, almost cried.
 
K

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
Yeah it's not just a footie thing. There's the heartbreaking story from last year of Wes Leonard, a high school basketball player who hit a game clinching shot, then he dropped right there while celebrating, and eventually died of the cardiac arrest.
 
H

Hank Scorpio

Member
Desmond said:
WTF, I didn't hear anything about this! You don't see this on RTE News:/
Click to expand...

Yeah, don't think it was on TV or anything but I read about it in the Irish Independent. The articles are becoming more and more regular in that paper :| Happening with semi-professionals and amateurs in football and GAA mostly it seems.

I wish there was a bit more information about it all. SADS, I mean. There was a news story on TV3 recently about a screening service in certain counties that was doing ultrasound scans on young men playing sport. Wouldn't mind getting it done, tbh.

Another story from the start of this year:
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Tr...s-and-dies-at-training-session-137880498.html
 
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