(WBEN) - After an emotional win on Sunday in Orchard Park over the New England Patriots, the Buffalo Bills received some more great news on Monday regarding safety Damar Hamlin.
During a Zoom call with media members from Buffalo, Cincinnati and others across the country, medical professional from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center announced that Hamlin's condition had improved enough to be released from the hospital and be transported back to the care of doctors in Buffalo.
"I traveled with him to the airport this morning with our UC Health Air Care and Mobile Care crew, including teammates who were with us on the field when Damar Hamlin collapsed. He landed safely, and as a standard as anybody who has gone through what he's gone through this past week - certainly after flying on a plane - he is going to be observed and monitored to ensure that there's no impact on the flight of his condition or on his lungs," said Dr. William Knight IV on Monday. "Dr. Pritts and I have spoken extensively with his care team in Buffalo, and I can confirm that he is doing well, and this is the beginning of the next stage of his recovery."
Since the last time doctors were able to detail the status of Hamlin's recovery this past Thursday, they say the 24-year-old had met a number of key milestones that allowed him to return to Western New York. Not only has Hamlin been extubated and been able to breathe on his own, he has continued to show he's neurologically intact by keeping up with physical and occupational therapy, while walking around the unit, in addition to tolerating a regular diet.
"We continue to be ecstatic about his recovery," said Dr. Timothy Pritts on Monday. "When we started all of this, what we told his parents is the only thing that mattered was the patient in the bed and getting them back to him and his family and to his community. We anticipate that he will undergo an ongoing series of tests and evaluations to determine the etiology of what caused the incident on Monday night, and to treat any pathology that may be found."
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In order to give the green light for a patient like Hamlin to return home to Buffalo, there was criteria doctors wanted to see that would allow for his condition to be upgraded from critical to either fair or good.
"We want to ensure that each organ system is stable to improving, and that he needs a minimum amount of assistance, such that he does not need intensive nursing. We have some awesome Rockstar nurses who have been with him from the beginning, and he no longer needs that level of nursing care. He no longer needs intensive respiratory therapy from our respiratory care practitioners, and is able to then move to a setting where he would have less intensive care," Dr. Pritts explained.
While doctors are not willing to look too far into the future with Hamlin's recovery process, they do feel confident with the initial prognosis and attitude the Bills safety has shown since waking from his medically-induced coma, he should recover well from this.
"He has a great, positive attitude. He originally asked, 'Who had won?' His answer now to that is, 'We all won out of this,'" Dr. Pritts said of Hamlin. "He's won as a patient, hopefully everybody will go out and get trained in CPR so that you, too, can save a life someday. And out of all that, everybody can win. So we really agree with his sentiment that we all won from this."
Monday's return of Hamlin to Buffalo was also exciting news for the Bills' leadership, including head coach Sean McDermott, who paid a visit to the second-year safety at Buffalo General Hospital shortly after his arrival back in town.
"I'm super excited that he's back in Buffalo. What a job the team of [doctors] and the medical team did out in Cincinnati, and now he's in great care here in Buffalo. We're happy to have him back," said McDermott during his weekly Zoom call with the media on Monday.
Upon seeing Hamlin for the first time in a week, McDermott felt he was doing well for himself, but was a little bit tired. Nonetheless, it still felt good for McDermott to see him in-person.
"He seems happy and happy to be back in Buffalo, and around some familiarity to him," he said. "We're just taking it, and I know he's taking it just one step at a time here."
While many of the other players in Orchard Park are eager to visit their beloved teammate at the hospital in Buffalo, McDermott says there will be a plan in place where the team will get its chance to see Hamlin once more since last Monday's medical scare in Cincinnati.
"We'll work through that at the proper time," McDermott said. "Brandon [Beane] has done a great job being on the phone with people from University of Cincinnati Medical Center and now here, along with Nate [Breske] and the doctors on both ends, to make sure that this was done the right way and that all those things - friends being able to go see him - are done the right way, that's handled the right way."
During Sunday afternoon's game, Hamlin was still in Cincinnati at the UC Medical Center, where he was actively involved in the contest via social media, exhibiting his jubilation throughout the day when the Bills did well on Twitter.
Doctors even went as far as confirming Hamlin's levels of excitement as he watched on Sunday. They also said they could feel Hamlin's level of gratitude with the support and outpouring of love from across the league, especially the Buffalo area.
"We've learned this week that the 'Bills Mafia' is a very real thing, and we all feel the love from you all in Western New York," Dr. Pritts said. "When the opening kickoff was run back, he jumped up and down, got out of his chair, set, I think, every alarm off in the ICU in the process. But he was fine. It was just appropriate reaction to a very exciting play."
When informed of Hamlin's excitement during Sunday's game from his hospital room in Cincinnati, McDermott says he wasn't surprised one bit.
"I think I had heard some of that, but not maybe all of it. That's great. It's great to hear," he said. "Super excited for him that he got a chance to watch it for sure. He's such a great person, and he's got such a positive spirit."
Although Dr. Lazlo Mechtler from the Dent Neurologic Institute has not been involved in Hamlin's direct care since Monday, he has been monitoring the situation since his cardiac arrest occurred more than a week ago. Coming from an academic standpoint as a physician, he feels the way medical professionals from the Bills and those in Cincinnati tended to Hamlin in order to save his life was done as it should have been done from start-to-finish.
"This is a young man who passed away on the field, was brought back, was stabilized, was transferred to a hospital, was taken care of, and now was discharged and apparently is in good neurological condition. The reality is, it's like a miracle," said Dr. Mechtler after the positive news pertaining to Hamlin. "If you look at the statistics, patients who pass out on the field from cardiac arrest, from Commotio Cordis, even in the best hands, the likelihood of neurological recovery or death is still very high. The statistics were against him, but everything was done just perfectly, so I commend everybody involved."
Dr. Mechtler points out that Hamlin's circumstance with his remarkable recovery process is an extremely rare occurrence. The fact he has a healthier heart due to his status as a professional athlete helped him rebound as fast as he did from his cardiac arrest, along with the help of the immediate level of care on the field.
"This is a very uncommon, if you can call it, rare phenomenon when you have a chest trauma, and it hits you at the right rhythm and causes your heart to go into a very pathologic, abnormal rhythm called ventricular fibrillation. At that point, not enough blood went to his brain, and that's when the athletic trainer and the physicians on the sidelines stepped in and started resuscitate him immediately, and then defibrillated him immediately," Dr. Mechtler said. "I would say this is the perfect storm, and it really tells you a lot about the professionalism that occurs at this level. It occurs in amateur sports, and at the same time, it occurs in people who are on the streets. But unfortunately, not everybody has the capabilities of performing such professional care so fast, with a great follow up at the Cincinnati hospital."
Now that Hamlin is back in Buffalo, Dr. Mechtler says there are likely three things that the Bills safety will go through next while at Buffalo General:
"First, people don't talk about chest compressions. It saved his life, but did he have any chest fractures, rib fractures? It's not uncommon to see chest injury with compressions. It had to be done and it was successful, but the first thing is they're going to look at the ribs and the sternum to see if there's any fractures," he said.
"The second is the cardiologists will come in, and they're going to look at the heart and see if there's a secondary cause, something that maybe he was born with. There's something called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, translated: thick heart muscle. That is a not an uncommon cause of arrhythmias in athletes. So they're going to do an echocardiogram, a holter monitor [test], a stress test, to look if the heart is healthy. My presumption is the heart will be healthy.
"The third is neurological. Without adequate blood flow, you can have injury to the brain. Obviously he's walking, he's talking, he's responding, but further testing has to be done. He'll have to have an MRI of the brain, special sequences looking for injury. He's going to have, undoubtedly, a brainwave, and EEG, to see if everything is functioning. If these tests are negative, meaning the cardiac workup, the brain workup, then his prognosis, meaning his future, is very bright."
And while doctors in Cincinnati would not go as far as predicting Hamlin's future in football going forward, Dr. Mechtler says with confidence that if all checks out, Hamlin could be back on the field for the Bills next year.
Hear more of our conversation with Dr. Mechtler available in the player below: