(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — In the days since Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on live TV, Dr. Stuart Berger said his team has received plenty of calls from anxious parents.
“‘Oh my God, this happened to this healthy 24-year-old, what about my kid? Can they safely participate in sports?’” Berger said. “And how do we be safe, and how do we protect ourselves.”
Berger co-founded Project ADAM in 1999 after Wisconsin high schooler Adam Lemel died of cardiac arrest while playing basketball. Although Illinois law requires schools to have defibrillators, Berger said they don’t always have the money for training and emergency planning.
“This takes it to [another] level, and then, you know, God forbid, if you had an episode, you’d be best prepared to intervene to get the successful outcome,” said Berger.
Berger said planning for sudden cardiac arrest means using those crucial first minutes productively as the on-field medical team did at the game with Damar Hamlin.
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“If one of these episodes happens, you’d know what to do, you’d know how to do CPR, you’d know where the AED is, and being able to jump into action, again, like they did on the field on Monday night,” Berger said.
His organization works with schools for free to learn and run drills for cardiac arrest. Lurie Children’s is an affiliate of the program, which Berger said has saved the lives of 200 people at schools across the country.
Three schools in the state have been designated “Heart Safe” by the project: Rochester Elementary School, Perry Elementary School in Carpentersville, Ill., and Dorothy Simon Elementary School in Winnebago, Ill.
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