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Jan. 5, 2023 - Rudy Giuliani
27:53
The importance of Automated External Defibrillators, the Damar Hamlin Story | January 4 2023 |Ep 302
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Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani back with another episode of Rudy's Common Sense.
Again, here we are in the free state of Florida and in Palm Beach.
Today, we're going to discuss a horrible tragedy that I think, at least for those who were watching the game and then many, many others became aware of it.
Took on a great deal of significance, even beyond football.
And it is just a, oh, I would say it's a thing that united the country in many ways.
I don't think anyone can look at this film or have looked at the live event and not have had the same reaction of Just real fear and empathy and questioning, all kinds of things that we're going to talk about.
Because I'm talking about the, I'm talking about the, the injury to DeMar Hamlin that took place during the football game between his team, the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals.
And it was a, it was a tackle.
Of Tee Higgins, who's a wide receiver for the Bengals.
He was going wide.
It looks like Jamar is the secondary tackler, but it's quite obvious now that Tee can't get around him.
So, decides to do what he's trained to do.
He knows he's going to be tackled.
So, he takes his body weight and he drives it into the defender.
He protects himself, protects his own body that way, and also possibly gets a yard or two more as they fall down, which, you know, that could be the first down or not.
All of that very acceptable professional football.
They go down.
Looks like an ordinary play, doesn't it?
And, uh, DeMar gets up quickly, as you would expect from what appeared to be relatively normal play.
And then all of a sudden he just collapses and collapses.
And when you look at him on the ground, he looks like he's dead.
Well, we're going to go into the details of that and his condition right now, which is critical.
And, um, Critical, but I'll have, again, I'll have the doctor describe it in more detail.
Critical, I'd say, with hope, but no assurances.
You know, football, from the highest levels of the NFL, which is, you know, the top in football, to the littlest peewee league with the little seven and eight year olds dressed up in pads, It's without doubt America's most popular sport.
It may also be America's most controversial sport.
For me, of course, baseball is America's pastime and will always be.
It's just the way I grew up and what I played more than I did football.
But I recognize the The crowds and the numbers and how it spread to England and the unbelievable event the Super Bowl has become.
And you would have to say it's America's most popular sport.
To me, baseball is the most beautiful, the most inventive, the most creative.
It requires a great combination of physical skill and intellectual skill, but so does football.
Football is a very intricate game, obviously a much more violent game than baseball, but a game that requires an extraordinary amount of mental skill.
There's no getting away from the fact that it is a game of violence.
The whole purpose of the game is to hit, like the sport of boxing.
In the sport of boxing, you hit one man.
In the sport of football, you hit when you tackle, you hit when you block, and you hit when you try to avoid a tackle.
That's actually what happened here.
The hitting is the integral part of the game.
Like boxing, you've got to hit your opponent, and you've got to hit your opponent hard in order to gain advantage.
So it is.
Without doubt, a game of violence.
And to some, that means it should not be allowed in a civilized country.
And they would like to ban it.
We're going to go through this and toward the end we'll talk on a more philosophical plane, but I would submit to you right at the very beginning that if we don't have games like football, we're not going to be a civilized country for much longer.
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They stick together really well.
We've got to do it.
And we're doing it for a good cause.
And they're doing it to destroy our country, destroy our way of life, and very, very often to make unseemly, ridiculously illegal amounts of money.
We just want to pass our country on to our children better than it's been passed to us.
And Patriot Mobile is a big part of that.
A big part of that.
We have with us Dr. Maria, who has many years of experience as an emergency room provider and gives her basically all the same abilities to take care of you in an emergency situation as a doctor, which she's done many, many times.
She's also, of course, been the CEO of a hospital and for seven years in a row, the leading rural CEO in the United States of America.
And someone who spent a great deal of time working on this whole area of emergency treatment and just happened to be watching last night and just happened to diagnose it immediately, exactly, correctly, and I wanted to explain why.
It's always great to be with you.
I've seen a lot of cases in emergency rooms.
As you know, I am a board-certified nurse practitioner.
So the moment I saw Damar Hamlin stand, get wobbly, and go down, I knew he basically had an acute cardiac arrest or what's called sudden death syndrome.
Typically sudden death syndrome and cardiac arrest are caused by a lethal arrhythmia.
So if you or I feel a little skip beat, most of the time that's from the atrium or we have friends that have atrial fibrillation and their atrium keeps going like this.
It's not lethal.
Anything from the ventricle in a chaotic rhythm, not ventricular tachycardia, but ventricular fibrillation, you don't produce cardiac output.
You lose your pulse and you don't breathe.
So basically I saw this sudden death quickly and respectfully.
I must say it was very heartwarming.
All those players and coaches got around to protect his dignity and you couldn't really see what was going on.
But I heard from the announcer they were performing CPR.
I know survival rates for ventricular fibrillation depends on one thing.
defibrillation.
That's when you need to shock the heart out of that chaotic rhythm.
And it sometimes takes multiple shocks, not just one.
And the faster you do it, the better the result.
Yes.
So seconds, minutes make a big difference.
American Heart Association says your top survival is if you get shocked within three minutes, and then of course five minutes.
And the more you go out, the harder it is for long-term survival.
Now he did have that hit.
You and I discussed that hit.
It didn't seem so bad.
Sometimes you really can't tell on television.
But there is a syndrome called Commodio Cordis.
And typically we've seen it in baseball and in hockey.
Real hard projectile hits in what's called the precordium of the heart.
And we have certain, if you think of an EKG, if you had an EKG, QRS syndrome, a T. I know what all those mean.
But there's a phenomenon, an R-on-T, if it hits and causes that R-on-T phenomenon, it'll kick you out of your normal rhythm and cause this ventricular fibrillation, again dropping down dead.
So you get hit with a projectile, or maybe a fist, or whatever, in exactly the wrong place, and it sets off the heart beating in an irregular way.
Correct.
And what's interesting about this syndrome, Comotus Cordis, Comotio Cordis, is that it typically happens, the average age is 15 years old, and the thought is the chest wall of youngsters is thinner.
So it is very rare, number one, on a football field.
It's rare as it is, but rare on a football field and rare somebody 24 years old.
So the other scenario is he just had a lethal arrhythmia for unknown reasons.
It could have just happened.
It could have been his electrolytes were off, his potassium was off.
It could have been from medication.
We just don't know.
Further testing has to happen.
And also, under this umbrella, sudden death syndrome, you have the commotio cordis, you have myocarditis.
Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart.
And when that happens, you have a hard time having that electrical rhythm normal.
So if you have a severe case, you can have sudden death.
The minute you say myocarditis, everyone says, does it have to do with the vaccine?
Because that is, particularly in young people, You are so right.
It's been a side effect.
Yep.
Anywhere from very mild to very severe cases.
That is right.
We don't know, right?
That's up to them to find out.
If he had a vaccine within weeks to months, typically we see the really lethal side effects from the vaccine within three to five days, but it can go out to six months.
If it was a year ago, then it would be less likely.
Very unlikely.
And it may be unlikely completely, we just don't know.
It may be unlikely.
But it would be irresponsible to completely rule it out.
No, you have to.
Out of some kind of political...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Diagnosis instead of medical diagnosis.
As a provider, there is no politics in what I do.
Gosh, America's changed a lot, Doctor.
It shouldn't be.
My first priority is getting a pulse back, breathing, and then it's really looking at what happened.
You look at an EKG, the rhythm, right when he gets into the hospital.
You look at oxygenation level and you provide oxygen.
He was intubated almost immediately.
That means they put a tube down through his trachea.
Did that happen on the field, in the ambulance, or in the hospital?
You know, it's hard to know.
It sounded more like it happened in the hospital, but I don't know for sure.
Depending on the severity, it could happen any of those ways.
The paramedics can do it.
They are allowed to do it.
I've seen it done.
Thank God for paramedics and our hospital people.
I've seen it done on the street.
So let's clarify the first point.
I remember your reaction very, very quickly, before I even realized what happened, you said, You said that he should be fibulated.
Fibulated!
And then, within a few minutes, he announces Who really couldn't see what was going on, so I guess they had to get informed from the people inside.
You were very, very happy that he had gotten some form, that they mentioned something.
They called it an AED.
Yeah, I didn't know what that meant, but that's a defibrillator.
That's a defibrillator.
Now I remember this.
You've shown it to me.
Yeah.
And I've seen this device.
Yeah.
And they have it in certain places.
Tell us what that is.
And it sounds like they did that within the first couple of minutes.
That's what probably got his pulse back.
It sounds that way, and if they did, and God willing he lives, that'll be the reason he lives.
Yes, and this is an important message.
Obviously, we're heartbroken.
It was very traumatic to see somebody just die, and then resuscitation efforts, and thankfully they were able to resuscitate him.
But the story here is the AED, an automatic external defibrillator.
How big is it?
It's small.
I know, it's real small.
It's about this big.
It's very easy to use too.
It's very easy.
So if you're in an airport and you see it on the wall and you need to break in and get it, it's very small.
You bring it right to the patient.
It'll tell you everything.
The minute you turn it on, it'll tell you where to put the pads.
Typically one in the front one in the back chest and the back in the back or though you could put it in the chest and on the side, but most likely they'll it'll tell you to put front back and It'll tell you everything It's going to say analyzing rhythm and then it'll say shock not advised if it was like a flatline asystole or shock advised because they're determining the chaotic rhythm and they'll tell everybody to get clear and press a button and it shocks them.
So that's what we, on television, I think we see that in a more dramatic fashion.
We see the two things put on the side of you.
Yes.
And then the body is shocked.
Yes.
And the body jumps up.
And sometimes it takes multiple shocks.
And then they do it a few times and usually the hero comes alive.
The only thing is I yell at the television when they show a flat line and they say, shock!
That's called asystole.
We do not shock in that scenario.
We give medications.
We do CPR, epinephrine, and other- Yeah, but it looks very dramatic.
It looks dramatic, yeah.
Now, when you said originally, sudden death syndrome, certain people, when you went on television and radio and you were on a number, you were called for your expert opinion about this, the reporters understood it, because they've been through this, but some of the people that then tweeted back to you thought you had said he was, Like he was dead.
Tell us what you mean by sudden death syndrome.
Somebody loses their pulse and doesn't breathe from this chaotic rhythm, whether it's cardiopulmonary arrest, whether it's from commotio cordis, whether it's electrolyte problems putting them into a lethal arrhythmia, they literally die.
So when he was on the ground and they showed that, The man was technically dead.
He did not have a pulse, nor he was breathing.
Before you even said anything, when I saw him go down, as he hit the ground, I thought he was dead.
Very different than the accident we saw earlier in the season, where that was a neurological accident, head injury, where you saw the fencing.
This was definitely cardiac related, caught definitely sudden death syndrome, cardiac arrest.
The cause is what the providers are going to look for. They're going to check blood work.
Was this potassium okay? What did all that look like? They're going to look at an echocardiogram,
which is like an ultrasound.
Yeah, I just had one when I got my stent put in.
Yeah, an ultrasound, and that shows the structure of the heart.
So they'll look at that.
They'll look at the EKG, the electrical pulses of his heart, and they'll do further testing.
Most likely, right now in the intensive care unit, they are cooling him.
This is something that research has proven that after a traumatic cardiac event, for 24-48 hours, you cool the body, let it rest.
We don't know, and I think our conversation with Dr. Maria has made that clear, that we don't really know if this is an accident that was caused by football per se.
Or an underlying condition, or a combination of both.
An underlying condition that may have remained dormant except for the trauma that took place.
And will we know the answer to that eventually?
Most likely.
Sometimes, like these people who have a sudden cardiac event and they die, say they die, and CPR is performed and an autopsy is done because they're young.
They don't see anything.
They surmise that they had a lethal arrhythmia.
So sometimes you don't know.
In this case, I think we're going to have an idea of what happened.
And his chances?
He's got probably a 50% chance.
Yeah, and they always want to improve, right?
They did great.
They defibrillated.
That's what we're supposed to do.
Number one, even higher level than CPR, you want to defibrillate.
But whenever you're looking at a case like this, even us in the emergency department, we debrief after.
Not to point fingers, but how can we always improve patient care?
Well, where was that defibrillator?
How long did it take to get out of there?
Did he run right out with it?
Maybe the trainer, the doctor, ran right out with it.
All these things to look at.
Is there a better place for it?
Should, you know, they'll look at everything.
They did a great job, but they'll want to even improve.
Hopefully this never happens again.
May I just add my spiritual thought, which is that everybody say a prayer for him, and maybe that'll take that 50% and move it way up.
Just ask Jesus to help him.
He's an incredible young man also.
He has this wonderful charity that I asked you to donate to, I did, and It is to get children toys.
Children who might not otherwise get toys.
Just go online under his name and you'll find it.
I think you have it on your Twitter, Mayor.
Yeah, just go to my Twitter and you'll find it and make a $5 donation, a $10, whatever you can do.
I think it'd be a statement to his mom, too, that we're all thinking about him and praying for him.
And somehow I think those things help.
In the whole big scheme of things, optimism and support.
You know, so Doctor, thank you very, very much for your participation.
You're very welcome, Mayor.
And as always, your brilliant analysis.
This is going to raise, without any doubt, the question, should we ban football?
Should we stop football?
Should we ban it for everybody up until the age of... whatever.
The people who are anti-football, which you are perfectly entitled to be.
It is a violent sport.
We'll use this as an example of why it should be banned as a sport.
I guess the more it turns out that it's football cause, the more they will argue it, although I think they will assume it is no matter what.
Here's my answer to that.
We have to decide what kind of nation we want to be.
And we have to decide that not in a Pollyannaish world that many of these people who would like to ban football live in.
We don't live in a world where the kind of violence that we see in football is rejected by, you know, three quarters of the world.
We live in a world in which the violence that they accept and practice and prepare for is considerably more barbaric and much, much worse than what we encounter with football.
And much of that world is antagonistic to us, the United States of America.
And you and your children and your children's children are going to have to preserve, protect, and defend
this great experiment in freedom that we have here in America
in a cruel, violent world, not in a world of singing peace songs and kumbaya and making peace signs at each other,
but rather a world in which people are seeking to weaponize everything imaginable.
When I say people, I mean nations like China with 1.4 billion people who think nothing of killing their own people.
They've killed some 80 million of them.
They're going to think nothing of killing you.
They've already done it with COVID and they're doing it again with COVID and our response is pathetic.
Are we going to grow up a nation of warriors?
Because we're going to be at war.
And if we're not prepared to be at war, we are surely going to be at war.
The best way to make certain that we're at war is to demilitarize and to be the kind of country that is so weak that it can't stand the violence created by football or sports similar to it that train your young men.
And I think of football as a man's sport, sorry.
Train your young men to do battle, to control their emotions, to control fear.
To use fear to perform better.
Understand camaraderie, teamwork.
Gosh, I mean, the best training to be on a SEAL team is to be on a football team.
And we need SEAL teams.
And you don't develop SEAL teams with a 22-year-old whose parents thought that football was too tough a sport.
Because SEAL teams are much tougher than football.
I hope we realize that if we don't remain The home of the brave, we're not going to be the home of the free.
Remaining the home of the brave means that our young people have to be trained in games that prepare them for life.
Part of life is violence.
And part of life is protecting our people and this great nation against violence because there are many with enormous resources that want to do violence to us.
The other choice is we become a submissive state to China, to communism, to fascism.
I don't know what our ancestors would think of us if we did that, huh?
I know what I would think of you if you did that.
Don't be so hasty to throw out football.
It's a training ground.
You learn a lot more about Teamwork about what is necessary when you're going to have to face the evil forces that want to take our nation away from us and our freedoms away from us by football than by singing peace songs.
This was a horribly unfortunate thing that happened, whether it results in even his recovering 100% if that's possible.
Because it was so close to death.
And if it results in death, of course, who can possibly give the family and the friends and anyone else enough solace to deal with it?
Other than to say that this was an extraordinary young man, very brave young man, a young man whose life and example should be followed by others.
And he made his mark in a very short period of time through his Wonderful charity.
I'm very hopeful that he's going to survive.
I'm even hopeful he's going to return playing football or commenting.
I'm even hoping I get a chance to interview him and meet him because it would be a great honor to do that.
These are the young men on which we can rest our country.
It's their shoulders that we can lean on to preserve, protect, and defend this great nation that's been given to us.
We've got to make their shoulders strong and tough, and we've got to back them up.
So, pray please for his complete and full recovery, for Damar's family, for all of his teammates and all the people in football.
And also say a prayer to God and thank God for giving us America and tell him he hasn't made a mistake by selecting us.
We've got what our parents and grandparents had and we're going to prove it.
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