The Anonymous Widower

Lessons From the Patrice Muamba Incident

Note that I’m calling it an incident, as hopefully after today’s hopefully promising news, things may get a lot better.

One of the reasons, I can call it an incident, may turn out to be the fact, that according to the Evening Standard a cardiologist was in the East Stand at White Hart Lane and he knew what was happening to poor Patrice, so he just told the Stewards, that he was going onto the pitch and did it! He also persuaded the paramedics to take Patrice to the London Chest Hospital, where they had the facilities to deal with such a serious heart attack. He even accompanied the footballer in the ambulance. Isn’t that what we think, we should expect from a doctor?

Someone, who was a friend of a friend, wasn’t so lucky.  He had a heart attack in the stand at a football match and the paramedics were unable to revive him. Perhaps, with help from a cardiologist, they might have succeeded. But my friend did say that he was well into his seventies and had already had one major heart attack and would have probably preferred to go out, watching his team.

So what are the chances of the right doctor being at the ground.

About ten years ago, I was in the circle of the theatre at Cambridge with C, when a rather worried usher asked if there was a doctor in the house. Whether there was a conference on, but out of about a hundred or so, she got at least ten doctors to come forward. I don’t know what happened afterwards, but hopefully they managed between them.

But White Hart Lane has a capacity of 50,000 or so and that greatly increases the odds of the right doctor being available.  And as the incident happened in front of him that helped too.

I am not saying Patrice was lucky, as to go through what he has is terrible, but can we increase the chances of getting the right sort of assistance in public events and even spaces.

For instance, the cardiologist was a season ticket holder and because of modern electronic ticketing, they could have found out he was at the game. So you can envisage systems, where doctors with particular specialities are texted, if something serious happens.  I can remember the day when Luc Nillis broke his leg at Portman Road, as it was in front of me. Would his treatment have been better, if they’d managed to find an orthopaedic consultant or two in the crowd of 20,000? They may have done, but I don’t know!

It does strike me that this could be an application for a smart phone!

March 19, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | Health, Sport | Football, Heart Disease, Phones