GRATEFUL: Jorge Paiz, 11, sits on the basketball court at La Mirada Community Gymnasium with the automated external defibrillator (AED) that saved his life after he collapsed from a previously undiagnosed condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, one of the leading causes of sudden cardiac death in young athletes. LEONARD ORTIZ, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER O.C. OVERVIEW ON AEDsWant to see a list of the O.C. school districts with automated external defibrillators (AEDs)? Click herePolicies and practices: defibrillators and hydration
• Four others encourage schools to use them and offer funding, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. • Texas passed its bill in 2007 after prominent high school football player Matt Nader collapsed and was saved by one of the defibrillators. This year machines in Texas have helped save a 6-year-old in Corpus Christi, a middle school student in Wortham and a woman in Fort Worth who collapsed at an elementary school upon arriving to pick up her grandchildren. • California mandates that private health clubs keep an automated external defibrillator on hand. While there are training and maintenance requirements, the law provides immunity from civil damages to clubs and their employees if the machine is deployed unsuccessfully or not used after a member goes into cardiac arrest. • In past decades, many coaches discouraged or banned athletes from drinking water during practices and workouts, even in demanding sports such as football. Those days are over.
Most teams stress the importance of drinking water the nights before practices and games. Coaches meet with parents and players to discuss nutrition, urging them to avoid harmful dietary supplements and sugary energy drinks. Still, there is no way to police a player's consumption when he's away from the field. Orange Lutheran High School football coach Jim Kunau says water is always available during his practices. Students can grab a bottle on the field between plays. During water breaks, his players are told to drink whether they are thirsty or not. Even so, the staff was stunned last season when a player started during a postpractice meeting. “Turns out he was just really, really dehydrated,” Kunau said, and paramedics had to give the athlete intravenous fluids. “Even though we thought we had done everything right, we still had a very scary moment,” the coach said.
|
Deaths of high school athletes spur action, debate
|
It took two tries to restart 11-year-old Jorge Paiz's heart after he collapsed on a La Mirada basketball court.
A pediatric nurse in the crowd checked for a pulse, failed to find one and started cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
An off-duty police officer ran for the automated external defibrillator, or AED, he had noticed upon entering the gym. He attached the portable machine to Jorge's chest. The device read that Jorge had no heartbeat and sent a charge through his body.
The machine fired again, shocking his heart back to work. By the time paramedics arrived – they share a parking lot with the gymnasium – Jorge's life had been saved.
A functioning defibrillator might have saved Megan Myers, a Dana Hills High School cross country runner, in September, or Shauna Stuewe, an Esperanza High School cheerleader, in February 2006. Both girls were 14 when they went into cardiac arrest.
Dylan Bradshaw, 15, still had a pulse when a trainer reached him on the football practice field at Northwood High School in May. But he, like Myers, Stuewe and Jorge, had an undiagnosed heart condition.
The death of 16-year-old Beckman High School football player Kenny Wilson last August was attributed to heatstroke.
Coaches and doctors know more than ever about sports-related health risks. But the athletes keep dying. In Orange County, Wilson, Myers and Bradshaw collapsed within nine months of one another.
DRINKING UP
Calls poured into the Orange County Department of Education after Wilson and Myers died, and the department helped form the Emergency Management in Schools committee to focus on hydration and cardiac resuscitation.
The committee, with members from the Orange County Fire Authority, medical organizations, PTAs and the California Interscholastic Federation, met for the first time in March. Last month it launched a campaign to promote awareness of dehydration symptoms.
Addressing heart ailments has been more complicated.
HIDDEN CONDITION
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle that typically goes undetected, is the No. 1 killer of American athletes, said Dr. Anjan Batra, director of electrophysiology at Children's Hospital of Orange County.
Ideally, every student would have his heart screened before participating in athletics, Batra said, and each campus would house many defibrillators like the one that restarted Jorge's heart.
The American Heart Association recommends each sporting venue have an automated external defibrillator. A cardiac arrest victim who waits more than a few minutes before a defibrillator arrives is at risk of serious brain damage.
But screenings are expensive. After Myers' death, Dana Hills made them available at athletes' physicals in May. The school's PTA, along with two outside organizations, pitched in to defray costs. Still, families that wanted the screenings had to pay $75.
With no state mandate or funding for the defibrillators, some administrators have avoided them. They cost about $1,500 each, and most districts that implement a program want more than one per high school.
On top of the device's price are ongoing training and maintenance costs. The Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District spent $30,000 to implement a defibrillator program last year, said Doug Domene, an assistant superintendent who wrote his district's guidelines.
Along with the lack of funding, districts have liability concerns, fearing severe repercussions if an employee mishandles a machine and a student dies.
Esperanza had an automated external defibrillator on campus when Stuewe collapsed. But the people around her did not know where it was or how to use it, said her mother, Lori Stuewe.
“You need to have first responders, several people trained in CPR and AEDs, and the AEDs have to be placed properly in cabinets that are visible and can be easily accessed, near phones, near sports areas. … All of it needs to come together,” Lori Stuewe said.
“We have administrative regulations in place, and we share them with anybody (other schools or groups considering implementation) that calls,” said Domene, who oversaw Placentia-Yorba Linda's effort to place at least three of the devices in each of its three high schools after Stuewe's death. “We've submitted it to our insurance company, and they've gone through it now probably three or four times.”
Mike Beekman, the executive director of safety and student services at the Capistrano Unified School District, wrote his district's defibrillator policy.
“I think the way things are going, there could be liability issues if schools don't have AEDs, eventually,” he said.
When school starts in the next few weeks, seven of Orange County's 28 school districts will have an automated external defibrillator presence, after the Santa Ana Unified School District and Capistrano Unified install multiple devices at all of their high schools this summer, a county spokeswoman said.
Two people behind the movement are Lori Stuewe and Gail Myers, mother of Megan Myers, each raising money in her district.
Capistrano and Placentia-Yorba Linda bought their machines with donated money. The Huntington Beach Union High School District, which started its program 2 1/2 years ago, spent $57,000 spreading 26 devices throughout the district. The school board paid 56 percent of the cost, district safety consultant Chuck Clemente said.
NOT AN EASY SELL
In July 2007, a Marina High School coach collapsed at practice and was revived with one of the defibrillators.
“It's already paid for itself,” Clemente said of the $57,000 cost of the program.
Yet as districts are forced to slice budgets, increased spending is not an easy sell.
Administrators from the Orange Unified School District, one of 21 districts without automated external defibrillators, did not return calls seeking comment. Someone who answered the phone at the district office told The Orange County Register, “We will not be getting them.”
At the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, which has no defibrillators, public information officer Laura Boss said, “We follow the letter of the law and take safety very seriously.”
Theresa Fox, president of Devices for Life in Yorba Linda, has met with every school district in Orange County, pitching the machines as a consultant and saleswoman. She has had better luck with Riverside schools, she said.
“Orange County, for being the county that we are, is just really resistant,” Fox said.
The school districts are not alone. Dr. Dan Cooper, a UC Irvine exercise physiologist and professor, is helping form an Orange County task force with Children's Hospital's Dr. Anthony Chang. At the group's first major session, set for February, experts from around the country will discuss the best way to address sudden death in athletes.
“It would be a mistake to simply start putting resources in one place or another until we've really thought it through,” Cooper said.
GOING PUBLIC
Friends of Gina Paiz, Jorge's mother, told her they wanted to hold a fundraiser for Jorge, who could eventually need a heart transplant.
Paiz agreed on the condition that Red Cross and defibrillator company representatives be present to educate people about emergency response. After doctors told her Jorge likely would have died without an automated external defibrillator, she has talked to school boards and at public functions, urging their widespread adoption.
“I'm not finished speaking about it, because I think there's a lot of things that parents can do,” she said. “I had never even heard of AED machines, and I have three children. I think we just need to be more vocal.”
The Brea Olinda Unified School District does not have the devices. Superintendent Skip Roland said implementation is “under study” and that he expects a decision by the end of this school year.
“We don't want to do it in a way that is either ineffective, promotes a false sense of security or increases our liability exposure and puts the district's assets at risk,” Roland said. “And you balance that against, ‘What value is a student life?', and it's not an equation that works.”
Contact the writer: jkay@ocregister.com
We want our site to be a place where people discuss and debate ideas that foster stronger communities. We built this for you. Please take care of it. Tolerate broad thinking, but take action against obscene or hateful material. Make it a credible and safe place worth preserving and sharing.
