A sports medicine doctor called Brian Sutterer broke down the play that resulted in serious injury to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin. Sutterer called the situation one of the “most rare” things seen in sports medicine.
“What we saw happen tonight is not related to any sort of vaccine,” he said. “This is almost certainly called something commotio cordis — an extremely, extremely rare condition that’s one of those things that we typically only think we’re going to read about in textbooks.”
Sutterer then explained how this can happen. It takes trauma to the chest at the exact time known as commotio cordis risk window.
“You have to suffer this blunt trauma to the chest at exactly the right moment,” he said. “Specifically on this upstroke of the T-wave in order for the heart to then be sent into this arrhythmia and subsequent cardiac arrest. This is one of those things that not only do you have to have a high enough force, but it has to happen within milliseconds of time window because if that impact comes at any other time in this electrical cycle, you’re fine. You don’t go into this.”
Sutterer said commotio cordis is what is most likely to have happened with Hamlin.
“Again, this is not something that people should go speculate about vaccines or anything like that causing this cardiac arrest,” he said. “There was a clear contact, a clear trauma and I think a clear reason why, unfortunately, this happened for Hamlin.”
Steve Kirsch originally reported on Monday night that according to Dr. Peter McCullough, the injury sustained is known as commotio cordis.
The time delay from the hit until Hamlin collapsed is expected in commotio cordis. McCullough reportedly told Kirsch that the ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation could have been set up by the vaccine if he took it.
However, McCullough wrote later that he communicated with one of the most experienced trainers in the world and both agreed it was a cardiac arrest in the setting of a big surge of adrenalin.
“If Damar Hamlin indeed took one of the COVID-19 vaccines, then subclinical vaccine-induced myocarditis must be considered in the differential diagnosis. We have been told he was successfully defibrillated on the field and has been intubated and is not spontaneously breathing which is consistent with anoxic encephalopathy. The nation prays for his complete recovery.”
In summary, Kirsch wrote that Hamlin’s injury was not caused by the vaccine, but it may have contributed to the severity of his injury if he took it. Kirsch has since updated his summary, instead writing that if Halmin was vaccinated, it likely played a “major role” in his injury until proven otherwise.
