Schools

'Playing it Safe' in Heart Matters at RBR

Barnabas Health sponsored the program to educate students and parents on cardiac issues afflicting youth. Free cardiac screenings this week.

“We may not be able to change what happened in the past, but we can come together to try to change what might happen in the future,” Superintendent Jim Stefankiewicz told a crowd of Red Bank Regional (RBR) students and their parents recently during a special presentation by Barnabas Health dubbed A Night of Playing It Safe.

The program discussed Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) caused by heart-related issues as well as concussions which affect nearly two million people a year, including many young athletes on the playing field.

Stefankiewicz explained that Barnabas Health, through its Matthew J. Morahan III Memorial Health Assessment Center for Athletes (The Center), approached the school to present this program as a preview to providing free cardiac screenings including EKGs and baseline concussion testing for all RBR students.

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Prior to the presentation, parents and students registered for the free screenings, which took place over four days in August. RBR was contacted by Barnabas since the school suffered the sudden loss of two students last year — Albert Martin and Riyadh’na Farrow — due to cardiac-related issues.

RBR’s basketball captain Albert Martin, a 17 year-old African American basketball player, fit the profile of many SCD victims.

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Last December, he collapsed on the RBR basketball court and sadly became the one in every 200,000 high school athletes who dies from SCD each year. 

Monmouth Medical Center’s Pediatric Cardiologist Dr. Loyda Rivera explained the technical causes of SCD, with the vast majority of cases presenting as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a hardening of the heart wall.

Although there could be symptoms such as shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, chest pain, fatigue, palpitations, dizziness or fainting, seizure or convulsions that indicate a heart abnormality, she told the crowd that sometimes, sadly, the only sign could be the sudden collapse and death. 

She explained that EKGs can be good indicators of heart abnormalities. While New Jersey law does not yet mandate that all student athletes obtain EKGs, a recent law upgrades student athlete cardiac screenings.

Dr. John Shumko, The Center’s Medical Director, discussed the incidents and warning signs of concussions or traumatic brain injury (TBI), saying that “275,000 children under the age of 14 require hospitalizations each year with 2,000 resulting in death.”

He explained that testing would be offered to high school students to create a baseline of their normal brain so it can be used in gauging recovery, should the student suffer a concussion in the future.

It is most important for students to follow a protocol for returning to play after suffering a concussion, he said. New Jersey law also mandates that a student must be approved to return to play by a physician trained in TBI.

This is very important because death could result if a second injury, even a slight one, occurs before the brain is fully healed from TBI. Concussion signs and symptoms include loss of consciousness, amnesia, behavior changes such as irritability, cognitive impairment or slowed reaction time and drowsiness.

The evening concluded with the words of The Center’s spokesperson, four-time Olympian and NJ Hall of Fame inductee Joetta Clark Diggs, who shared her own issues with a heart murmur and her family’s cardiac medical history.

“As athletes we tell ourselves to be tough, but we also have to be smart," she said. "It is important to be proactive. You are really blessed by what Barnabas is doing as they are on the cutting edge. You should embrace this program.”

RBR parents interested in having their students take part in the free screening this week can visit the RBR website at rbrhs.org for registration forms and the screening schedule.

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