We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.
Student Who Collapsed
When Ana Sharp got a phone call telling her that her 16-year-old son had collapsed at school Friday morning, all the person on the other end of the line would tell her was that he was still breathing. But she should hurry.
Her son, Adrian Longoria, had collapsed in the gym while playing basketball during a physical education class about 9:30 a.m. Friday, Principal Tim Patton said.
An athletic trainer who was present felt for Longoria’s pulse, but Patton said he detected a very faint heartbeat or no heartbeat at all. He said the school nurse then used one of Willis High’s AEDs to revive the student.
The Parents
At Memorial Hermann, an echocardiogram revealed Longoria suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart abnormality caused by a genetic mutation that thickens the muscle wall between the two lower chambers of the heart, said Dr. P. Syamasundar Rao, director of pediatric cardiology at Memorial Hermann and professor of pediatrics and medicine at The University of Texas. Rao said hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one of a handful of heart defects that can go undetected in children until too late. “All those abnormalities are on people physically who look absolutely normal and may not have any symptoms,” he said.
“He’s always been active, and it’s really surprising because you know he’d play football and he’d come home just dead tired and then to have this happen while he’d just been playing gym basketball, it just really shocked us,” his father said.
