Positivity: Baseball emergency has a happy ending
July 11, 2007
Ball to the chest stopped player’s heart, but fate intervened
A 14-year-old Carmel boy nearly died on a baseball field Saturday after a pitched baseball struck him in the chest and stopped his heart.
Max Zhang dropped to the ground immediately after getting struck by the pitch in the Wooden Bat Classic tournament at Mount Vernon High School in Fortville, said Terry McGlothlin, one of the coaches of Zhang’s travel baseball team, The Southside Saints.
“He was pretty much dead when he hit the ground, and the cardiologist saved him,” McGlothlin said Tuesday.
Max was treated at Hancock Memorial Hospital in Greenfield then transferred to the intensive care unit at St. Vincent Children’s Hospital. He was released Monday.
The cardiologist, Dr. Douglas Segar, Carmel, was watching his own son play in another baseball game at the weekend tournament when he heard cries for help. He ran over to Max, along with two or three women who were registered nurses, and started cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
“Max’s eyes rolled up into his head, a little bit of white stuff was coming from his mouth, his heart wasn’t beating and he wasn’t breathing,” McGlothlin said. “They saved his life.”
Segar said Max suffered commotio cordis — defined as sudden death due to ventricular fibrillation when a baseball or other projectile strikes the external surface overlying the heart. The condition happens rarely, he said, and the victim must be breathing a certain way, the heart must be beating on a down beat and the ball must strike in just the right spot on the chest for it to occur.
It happens about 20 times a year, the cardiologist said. Only 10 percent of victims survive…..
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