Beck Water

great idea, but make it in honor of the Bills training and medical staff. Denny Kellington may have done the first chest compressions, but the guy who grabbed his radio and said whatever their word is for cardiac arrest to start the rest of the equipment and team in motion, the guy or gal who protected his neck from being jostled in case of injury, the guy or gal who started unscrewing his face mask for oxygen and cutting off his Jersey and pads so the defibrillator patches could be adhered in the correct locations….they are all heros

A little note of caution. What “neurologically intact” probably means in this medical context is they brought him out of sedation, and started talking to him and asking him to respond. Questions to respond with a blink or hand squeeze if he can feel touch on hands and feet, move hands and feet. They may have disconnected the vent and trialed if he could breathe on his own. “Lungs continue to heal” may mean that he’s still on the ventilator. Again like having a pulse as he left the field, it’s good. It’s very very good. It beats the hell out of the alternative. Ir’s a very very very good sign, but at this point may not go as far as “no impairment” to physical or mental abilities. But 60 hrs post event this is fantastic progress

Apologies if I missed this upthread Pretty cool

So I don't know if the OP question has been addressed, but Taron was listed as "limited" in today's practice with concussion. We also released CB Xavier Rhodes and claimed a safety named Jared Mayden from the NY Jets practice squad. Mayden spent from Oct 10 to Nov 3 on the Bills PS. 2020 with the 49ers, mostly PS but active for a couple of games 2021 with the Eagles, injured in 2022 camp and waived in September 2022 Bills and then Jets PS Alabama guy https://www.nfl.com/prospects/jared-mayden/32004d41-5928-9049-dc85-306cbb28b23a Just under 6 ft tall, 200 lbs, 4.44 40-time

When I saw the replay of that PI call, I thought "OK, if that's the way you want to call the game - just be sure you call it fair to both sides that way"

Dressed for Cleveland and for Detroit games. Played on ST

Ha. Nothing prepares you for seeing traumatic life or death events. You're told about it. You hear about it. But when you encounter it for yourself, it's different. And then once one sort of life or death event becomes something you encounter enough to know how to process it, you see something worse. Still, I see your point that witnessing your teammate being resuscitated before your eyes is A Lot. It's A Lot when someone who is trained and knows what they're going to see, sees it. The thing is, medical emergencies (in the moment) are easier for trained medical personnel to deal with because they follow their training and focus on the task at hand. There are sayings like "get back on the horse as soon as possible" for riders and "go back up as soon as you can" for aerialist performers because the sooner you get back to doing something you're trained to do, the sooner the trauma gets pushed aside by the familiar routine and the less space there is for fear and uncertainty to grow. So I think they need to get back to their routine ASAP while they're working through stuff. Because otherwise it's just going to grow and become this Shadow Beast in the corner they have to fight. They've all taken thousands of blows and dealt them. They know this. What happened to Damar is apparently very very rare overall and even rarer in football - the fact that guys who have been in the league for decades say "I've never seen anything like this" shows this. Sometimes the best way out is Through. JMO. This is such a horribly bad take that it deserves to be placed on a pedestal, cryogenically preserved, and enshrined in a Hall of Fame for Bulletin Board Bad Takes somewhere.

Good point that being the one everyone looks to takes a high toll of emotional energy, and that the Bills have gone through A Lot this season. I hope you're correct and that he reaps the reward of having created that environment, if he needs the support himself. I hope he's OK. It would certainly be understandable if he's struggling, or temporarily overwhelmed. But I think the Bills needs him right now, so I hope he's able to tap the inner resources of his Faith and his family, and be present for them.

It's meaningful to a bunch of team's playoff hopes and seedings I believe.

Huh. All right I gave him the click. And I thought what he said made so much sense that now I may have trouble visualizing his nose as a tiny penis in future. Go figure.

Individual responses to anesthetic drugs do vary so I wouldn't want to exclude that some might come out aware, just as some patients are conscious during surgery under general anesthesia and remember it. For n of 1, when my mom was sedated and placed on a ventilator, then transported in an ambulance to the major teaching hospital, she didn't remember a thing about it. She remembers being in one hospital having just eaten some breakfast, then waking up 28 hrs later in the ICU of a different hospital, and nothing in between.

Depends upon the protocol. Normal body temperature 37 deg C. Cool to 32-34 C. So 3-5 degrees.

The NFL pretty much has to take care of Hamlin, vested or not. It would be an enormous and very public black eye for the "Shield" to do otherwise. I don't like the "McDermott is still battling" message. There was something said about a member of the Bills organization who collapsed from exhaustion and emotion. I hope that wasn't McD, or that if so, he is able to be resilient.

I think Yolo's meaning was that the hospital and its staff need to tread very carefully about releasing medical information about Damar Hamlin's condition. Privacy of personal health care information from unauthorized release by physicians, hospitals etc is one of the things HIPAA actually DOES prohibit. The hospital staff updates Damar's family and anyone else he's previously authorized (team rep maybe). Then they decide what information to release and when

Big respect for Burrow's behavior throughout the whole situation as well. One of the things Taylor said is that when he decided to go to the visitor's locker room to talk to Sean McDermott, the Bengals captains approached him and said they wanted to go talk to the Bills captains. He wasn't sure it was the right thing to do, but he passed the request to Sean McDermott. Once he saw the two groups together he said he knew immediately it was the right thing to do. They both (Burrow and Taylor) come across as true Leaders of Men.

Truly impressed by watching the entire interview with Zac Taylor. Seems like a man I'd want to run through a wall for - totally genuine and straight-shooter. Respect.

I'm pretty sure Hamlin's uncle was interviewed and said he had been resuscitated again at the hospital. Pretty sure that's been reported a couple times up thread. So now it's being said that was a misunderstanding, which happens, and great news, but also explained by a couple of people here why that would not be medically unexpected if it did happen.

I'll just put out here from personal experience - the adage "a lie (or misunderstanding, or misinformation) travels around the world before truth has a chance to put on her shoes" applies in emergency medicine as elsewhere. Doctors and nurses who are focused on saving a patient's life are understandably not the best communicators to relatives. One layperson relative is not the best communicator to another relative. In situations where someone close to me has required emergency care, I've been told things by an LPN relative that didn't make sense, and then received different information when I had a chance to speak to the physician. It's not deliberate, it's just the old "game of telephone" where things get altered as they're passed along.

Thank you for saying this. I do understand that some people don't want to wade through technical discussions on the thread. I think most of them arise because people re-tweet or bringing in numbers I don't think are consistent with the current state of the medical art, and then we get into Brandolini's Law Anyway, I go back and forth about if I say something am I just annoying people, it's good to have the perspective "yes, but other people find it helpful" We all cope with grief and fear in different ways. Some of us pray most effectively with tools in our hands, and in this case information is a tool.

Can you share where you heard this? Who is "they"?

Fantastic post, Thanks! So basically, any cardiac arrest/ROSC leaves the patient susceptible to re-arrest? But now we have reports that he did not re-arrest so that's great if true. On the ambulance, I'll give my perspective as a former EMT which could be full of wind, but whatever. I think the ambulance most likely waited because the emergency physician or one of the paramedics was performing a procedure, in consult with the trauma center, that was quicker and easier to perform while the ambulance was not in motion. You know how using your cell phone is hella easier when you're sitting still vs. jouncing around a city street? Yeah, That. It's kind of an unusual situation BECAUSE there is an emergency physician and airway specialist and a broader range of equipment and drugs available to them at the stadium. So the physician/paramedics could well have been in contact with the trauma center and they mutually decided to do whatever they paused to do vs. waiting 10-15 minutes to arrive at the Trauma Center. It's my understanding that since Kevin Everett and Ryan Shazier's injury, the NFL is "all in" on hypothermia treatment. They reportedly started an IV - I'm told that chilled IV fluids are now maintained at Pittsburgh stadium, so quite likely elsewhere as well - and they could well have packed him in cooling packs or ice to start hypothermia, stadia most certainly are supplied with ice and blue ice packs. They might even have paused to do this before heading for the ER. Sal C reported that Damar's mom was on her way down while he was still on the field, standing behind the Bills bench saying "I want to be with my son" and he summoned Dane Jackson who got the attention of the Bills Chaplain, and they then worked with security to get her on the field ASAP. I think she just got down to the while the ambulance was still there so they put her in, and if the ambulance had been ready to leave before she got there it would have left and security would have put her in a car and followed.

My point was that imposing a deadline of 24 hrs as a point to be concerned, is intrinsically speculative. What is it based upon? To answer your question: Obviously, it would be great if 24 or 48 hrs brought positive news but no, I'm not concerned because 24 hrs have gone by without news. Obviously, I'm very concerned and worried that he needed to be resuscitated 2x and that he was said to not be breathing on his own after resuscitation - though, there seems to be some contradictory info on that. But, I know that patients who are initially unconscious after resuscitation do recover fully, so I'm still hoping for the best. I also know that sedation with or without hypothermia are used to reduce oxygen demands by the brain and allow time for healing. Some of the hypothermia protocols call for 24-48 hrs of hypothermia, followed by gradual rewarming - with no attempts to look for return of spontaneous breathing until rewarming is complete. I said up-thread that we might not hear anything until today at the earliest, and some others with experience said Thursday. The NYT article linked upthread quoted experts saying that if there is no improvement within 72-96 hrs that would be concerning. The hypothermia protocols from Johns Hopkins and U Penn note that improvement may not be seen immediately after the protocol, and that decisions should not be made for 72 hrs after the protocol is fully completed. So I'll go with the experts, and say that if we don't hear of improvement ~96 hrs post incident (Friday night), I'll be concerned.

One of the experts interviewed in the Times article made a point that seems relevant - that the more concerned physicians are about neurological damage, the more aggressive (meaning likely to use/likely to extend duration) they may become with sedation and hypothermia. Hmmm. Speaking with my engineer hat, the protocols must then vary depending upon the cooling devices available. Ice bags or cooling gel packs are hard to maintain at intermediate temperatures, but a blanket featuring flexible tubing through which a bath circulates water should be able to be controlled for gradual re-warming.

If the blow throws the heart into fibrullation is that due to muscle damage, or does the blow actually damage one of the nodes or bundles? Because if the node itself is damaged in some way (bruised?) that might explain the repeated cardiac arrest? I agree you don't average studies. My feeling is a more recent study (assuming both solid work and some procedural or treatment-based explanation of differences), it supercedes the older study. So if a newer study says hey, portable AEDs are much more common now and that plus bystander CPR make a huge difference to survival, I regard the more recent study as superceding the old. As someone said up-thread, outside of a hospital, there is likely no better place to receive care for a true medical emergency than on the field at an NFL game. And it's possibly better than a hospital, because there's a dedicated team standing by (as opposed to everyone on shift already working like mad) and they have access to something like 90-95% of the initial equipment a trauma center ER would use. It's a good question, but you're likely correct IMO. Also, the older 10% survival abstract says that roughly half the cases occurred at homes, playgrounds, schools etc - outside organized sports.

So per information posted above, the NFL DOES have a trauma team standing by, not at the hospital but actually on the field. It consists of a physician trained in Emergency care, an airway specialist, 2 paramedics, plus the physicians and trainers who travel with the visiting team and the physicians and trainers of the home team. They all get together 90 minutes or an hour before the game, and discuss roles and responsibilities in different emergencies including cardiac arrest - who will maintain the airway, who will perform chest compressions, who will set up and operate the defib, presumably who will remove the facemask and pads, how the ambulance will be brought onto the field, what hospital will be used etc. Links posted upthread.