can young,healthy,athletic men have heart attacks?

[Lurker011]

this is a sad case. i like to read bodybuilding message boards. about a week ago,there was a 22 year old australian bodybuilder who was found unresponsive and breathless in a sauna. he was rushed to a local hospital but could not be revived. the postmortem report said that he died from a massive heart attack. he was just 22 and had a clean bill of health and was very athletic. this is shocking. have any of you,especially in the cardiac department,had a case of young and healthy men who had MI's? this is something that has really stunned me.

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

google "len bias" if you want a classic example. he was the leading basketball draft choice, signed with the boston celtics, and died at the party to celebrate his signing.

len bias' mi was triggered by a cocaine overdose.

[Karl Farmer]

Teenagers, even, have heart attacks daily, in sports expecially. Since they are yet to form completely, any defect can cause an MI under stress. And bodybuilders ofetn use testosterone and other no-nos, the side effects can be deadly. And the obesity crisis in young people will no doubt lead to more heart attacks. I read a study, in fact, that recommended statins for TWELVE year old obese children- it said that by age 21, the damage would already have been done, if you can believe this?

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

Pretty much anyone can have a "heart attack" and die from it. Generally speaking, at least from my own education, athletes that die from coronary causes do so from cardiomyopathy, Long QT syndrome, or substance use that causes either coronary artery spasm or the cardiomyopathy.

The thing with long QT is that the patient could very easily have an "R on T" and go into a VTach or Torsades. Defibrillators might not synch for Torsades, so if yours won't, hope that someone arrives soon with a manual defib or that your defib unit has a manual mode. The problem remains after conversion and your patient could easily go back into a lethal arrythmia...

Bodybuilders and so on are fit... Unfortunately, their type of fitness may not be all that great for overall health. If they went after good overall health, they might not be competitive in their field. Being at the forefront of human performance can be a huge stressor, and can result in some interesting outcomes down the road.

[caliotter3]

When I was in Germany, a 19 year old soldier collapsed and died of cardiac arrest while playing basketball. When talk went around, no one seemed to be aware of the soldier having any medical problems; at least one does not expect 19 year old young soldiers to have medical problems.

[MassED, BSN, RN]

Reggie Louis, Hank Gathers, and Florence Griffith-Joyner were all star athletes who died of heart attacks.

Flo-Jo died of asphyxiation due to an epileptic seizure...

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/12/cov_04newsa.html

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

When I was in Germany, a 19 year old soldier collapsed and died of cardiac arrest while playing basketball. When talk went around, no one seemed to be aware of the soldier having any medical problems; at least one does not expect 19 year old young soldiers to have medical problems.

This is not uncommon. On top of that, since young people (in particular, soldiers) aren't expected to have medical problems, and since cardiac problems seem to be relatively rare in youth, nobody does an EKG on the young... which could very easily catch Long-QT syndrome and make it easier to prevent R on T triggering a lethal arrhythmia.

[usalsfyre]

I was educated that people are thrown into multi-phasic V tach (torsaddes) with long q-t syndrome, and that this is actually not a shockable rhythm due to the inability for synchronization. Anyone have insight on this?

Quick word here. Multi-phasic ventricular tachycardia is a shockable rhythm but an unsynchronized countershock (defibrillation) must be delivered rather than a synchronized one (cardioversion). If you look at the current AHA recommendations I believe all V-tach gets defib rather than cardioversion.