School Athlete Deaths Preventable?

The cause of San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Thomas Herrion's death last weekend remains a mystery, but the 23-year-old's case has focused attention on a silent heart condition that may kill hundreds every year.

And, as Mika Brzezinski

Ryan Boslet, says Brzezinski, had it all.

At 17, he had colleges around the country chomping at the bit to recruit him, making his parents, Chris and Sandy Boslet, beam with pride.

Sifting through a large stack of recruitment letters from schools, Sandy told Brzezinski, "What he lived for was right here."

Ryan never got those letters. A week before many of them arrived, he collapsed at practice.

Chris and Sandy rushed to the school to find Ryan lying flat on the gym floor, as his coaches frantically tried to revive him.

"We knew something was really wrong then," Sandy says. "You're just in shock. It's just not real."

Ryan had been the picture of health, his parents say, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital an hour later.

No one had a clue there was anything wrong before the end came, Sandy says.

But the Boslets now believe there was a huge warning sign, hidden inside their son's heart, and that a simple electrocardiogram (EKG) "absolutely" could have saved him.

"It would have been a 15 minute procedure," Chris says, "and they would have seen it."

An autopsy showed Ryan had a silent heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM.

By one estimate, as many as 300 people die from it each year, and the vast majority will be athletes under 18.

"If there's something that will detect it … then I think we should utilize those machines that will save our kids' lives," Sandy says.

The Boslets are pushing for all schools to require EKGs and ultrasounds before clearing any kid to play sports.

Cardiologist Dr. Robert Myerburg agrees. He says in Italy, EKGs for young athletes are mandatory and, "Among their athletes, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is almost nonexistent as a cause of sudden death in athletes. In the United States, it's the most common cause.

But while more than 20 million teenagers take part in athletics in the United State, not even the American Heart Association advocates automatically doing EKGs.

"If we could solve this problem with two simple tests, EKG and ultrasound, we'd have done that a long time ago," pediatric cardiologist Dr. Robert Campbell says.

It's better to track family history and look for classic warning signs like fainting, or shortness of breath, before requiring an expensive test, Campbell says.

"No matter how many EKGs we do … that simply alone is not going to give us that perfect guarantee that we've prevented sudden death," he says. "… It comes down to resources and reality."

Some schools are now setting up programs that give teenagers a chance to voluntarily have their hearts checked.

But the Boslets say their reality should be reason enough to mainstream the tests.

"It happened to me," Sandy says. "It can happen top you. I thought it was something I'd only seen on TV. …You don't know, and who wants to mess around with that? It kills you. You'll never see him. You'll never put him to sleep. You'll never see him get married. You'll never see all those things you dreamt of doing with your kid.

"And I think it's so sad that his life was taken from him and he didn't get to experience all these wonderful things."

And, Brzezinski says, fighting to save other kids from the same fate is all they can do to keep their grief at bay.