Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Arkansas Sports Hogs' Garrett Uekman had enlarged heart
Posted by Max Brantley on Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 3:51 PM
40/29 reports on Washington County coroner's report on the death of Garrett Uekman, 19, the Razorback tight end who died Sunday after playing Saturday against Mississippi State.
Rogers Morris said Uekman had an enlarged heart. He also said the enlarged heart caused arrhythmia and cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology.Toxicology tests came back negative.
The coroner is being quoted as saying the condition had been undetected.
Chris Bahn reports a rosary at 5 p.m. Sunday at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in North Little Rock and funeral at noon Monday at Christ the King Catholic Church in Little Rock.
Comments (7)
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What a shame. I guess the physicals given at the college level cannot catch a problem such as this. My heart goes out to the Uekman family. May God bless them.
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There appears to be a need for enhanced physicals at the high school and college level if such an issue can be detected by an EEG or other non-invasive technique for all sports, not just foosball.
The problem is that the heart can enlarge benignly due to the cumulative effects of exercise. So a simple ECG, or CXR cannot determine the difference. The current guidelines do not indicate screening ECGs for athletes for this very reason, too many false positives. True, there are other ways to tell the difference, but many are expensive, invasive, or not specific and so are not commonly used.
It's tragic, but unless the kid showed any symptoms of his conditions before this there would have likely been no indications to see beforehand.
Here are Coach Bobby Petrino’s remarks at last night’s memorial service for Garrett Uekman:
http://www.arkansas.rivals.com/content.asp…
So you exercise a lot and your heart enlarges and it can kill you? I thought you are supposed to exercise to keep in good health?
What happens when you exercise is that the individual muscle fibers in the left ventricle ( the chamber of your heart that pumps blood to your body) contract with more force due to the increased amount returned back to the heart. This has the same effect as lifting weights at the gym, the fibers themselves grow, so the muscle enlarges, but in a way that makes blood pumping more efficient. (this also why trained athletes have a lower resting heart rate)
In a idiopathic (latin for: "we dont know why) myopathic situation, the heart grows in an inefficient way, that interferes with the pumping mechanism, electrical conductance, or both. In the case of sudden death of an otherwise healthy kid, it's usually because of the way it was formed during fetal development. And sadly the first symptom is usually sudden fatal cardiac arrest.
So, in most people, exercise is a very good thing. But of course you should always consult your physician before you start a new regiment.
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