Every year 600 outwardly healthy young people die from sudden death syndrome. But a new free screening test could help
Thirteen year old James Doherty at home in Codicote, Hertfordshire. He suffered a heart attack and died for 15 minutes before being revived.
In September 2008, James Doherty, a 13-year-old junior tennis champion, was training with his coach when he collapsed at the back of the court. Realising something was wrong, a spectator started pumping his chest. For 11 minutes, James “died” — his heart beating out of rhythm and no longer able to pump blood around his body. When the ambulance arrived, they shocked his heart and rushed him to hospital.
“By the time I got to the hospital there were six cardiologists and six paediatricians working on my son. I couldn’t believe it,” says Sarah Doherty, 49, from Codicote, Hertfordshire. “He was my fit and healthy boy. I couldn’t understand what had happened to him in the time since I’d dropped him off for tennis. When I asked if he was going to be all right, I was told, ‘We are not in the business of giving false hope’. They thought he was going to die.”
James was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital, Central London, where Long QT syndrome (LQTS) was diagnosed, a congenital heart defect that is estimated to affect one person in 2,500. He was fitted with a cardiac defibrillator, designed to give a life-saving electrical shock to kickstart his heart should it stop beating again. Ten days later James left hospital. Extraordinarily, two other boys from his school also died of sudden cardiac death that year: Mathew Blease, 13, of viral myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and Matthew Pearson, 14, who died of an unconfirmed cardiac condition in his sleep on Boxing Day.
This May, the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (Cry) is launching a free screening programme in London and the South East for 14-year-olds: a simple ECG test that can detect or flag-up potential abnormalities of the heart and takes minutes to carry out. The tests, at St George’s Healthcare Trust in southwest London, are being offered to any child born in 1995, as 14 is the earliest age screening can be carried out. It intends to provide, for the first time, a snapshot of the prevalance of heart conditions across a single age group and could be the model for a national programme in the future… Continue Reading
