A concussion is a cardiac arrest after a minor injury. They began to write about this in the medical literature back in the 18th century. Nobody knows exactly how often this happens.
Now concussion is considered one of the causes of sudden death in athletes. Precisely a concussion, because a bruise is something stronger and more traumatic. Well, for example, if a horse kicked someone in the chest.
It's different with a concussion. This is a difficult and rare situation. It is believed that there have only been a few hundred confirmed cases worldwide.
Concussion usually occurs in adolescents and much less frequently in adults.
In 95% of cases, these are boys. Most often these are athletes in whom a ball or a hockey puck arrives.
Why is this happening
Have you seen a piezoelectric element in a lighter? It is a crystal that produces electricity when it is compressed. Something similar happens to the heart.
Some kind of mechanical effect on the heart can provoke electrical effects in the heart muscle. From this, the heart begins to tremble with a small tremor. Normal heartbeats fail, blood is not pumped, and circulation stops.
This is a very complex phenomenon. It depends on the phase of the cardiac cycle, on the place of impact, on the speed of the ball and something else.
Time
The ball should hit in a narrow window from 20 to 40 thousandths of a second at a certain phase of the cardiac cycle.
A place
The ball should fly straight into the silhouette of the heart.
Speed
If the speed of the ball approaches 65 kilometers per hour, then the effect will be, and if the speed is higher, then it is more likely to get a heart injury, but not to stop the blood circulation. This is strange.
Hardness
Solid objects are killed more often. This is logical.
The form
Flat objects usually do no harm. But small balls turned out to be the most dangerous.
This whole nightmare often happens to young people. It is suspected that the whole thing is in the thin and movable chest wall. It is difficult to push through a mature person.
How does it happen
During sports, a ball or puck flies into the chest of an athlete. It must be something solid. Nothing like that happens from footballs and tennis balls.
Standard chest protection (like a hockey one) in about one third of cases does not protect against concussion. The heart stops and the person dies without medical attention.
After the developed countries began to pay attention to this situation, not all 100% die from a concussion, but only half of the victims. They were saved by people who know first aid techniques.
Prevention
It's complicated. For athletes, special protection is being developed. They teach not to take pucks and other hard objects on the chest. But that doesn't always help.
