BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) As Buffalo Bills Safety Damar Hamlin continues his recovery in the 716 at Buffalo General Medical Center, UB Neurosurgeon Dr. Kevin Gibbons, who is also chief of Neurosurgery at Kaleida Health, talked about Hamlin's next phase of recovery.
"Cardiac physicians, and electrophysiologists will likely do testing to make sure that there's no intrinsic damage to the heart or some reason that may have made him more susceptible to this." Other than that, Gibbons said, "it may just be a situation of very bad luck, although he was lucky to have it happen in a place where he had a great medical team and first responders ready to take care of him."
Hamlin is stable from a cardiac standpoint. His neurologic recovery has been excellent thus far.
Gibbons is not part of Hamlin's medical team, but in his opinion, he expects Hamlin to remain at Buffalo General for days to possibly a week or more. "That will be decided by his team of physicians" he said.
Could Hamlin possibly go to Sunday's wildcard game at the stadium?
"I will leave that up to his physicians," said Gibbons. "Whether they want to take him out of the environment of the hospital. I know it would be inspiring to his team and the community, but his safety has to be top of mind."
The task ahead for doctors is to determine whether something caused Hamlin to collapse on the field January 2nd, or if it was a freak accident.
It's also unclear if Hamlin's heart would have stopped without the hit.
Gibbons said it's a diagnosis of exclusion. "The team of physicians who took care of him at the University of Cincinnati made it pretty clear that he didn't suffer high cervical cord injury. Testing has ruled out a head injury, hemorrhage or stroke. It is moving toward a diagnosis of exclusion of a cardiac arrhythmia caused by a blow to the sternum."
Gibbons added that it is not unheard of. It's a rare event that typically affects young individuals who get a blow to the sternum often from a baseball or lacrosse ball. He noted, "that is the direction this is moving in."
Asked if this is something in which proactive steps can be taken to minimize the risk, Gibbons had a different takeaway in mind.
"The biggest part of this story is the fact that CPR was initiated within a minute. That improves, by a factor of two to three times, the likelihood of a good outcome after cardiac arrest."
He encourages everyone to learn bystander CPR. "You can go to the American Red Cross or American Heart Association websites. There are videos less than 3 minutes in length on how to do bystander CPR."
Some good can come out of this, he said. "We can take some steps to make our community safer. Not just at a Bills game, but your kid's little league game."
