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Computer Game Player Gets Blood Clot In Leg
Thanks to BBC News for its article discussing a UK teenager who developed a blood clot in his leg after playing videogames in one position for too long. The piece explains: "Dominic Patrick, 14, from Merseyside, developed deep vein thrombosis after a rainy day inside with a games console... The potentially dangerous condition was caused because Dominic had his legs tucked under his body." A doctor interviewed suggested this was a relatively rare case, however: "The only risk factor we could find in this case was the fact that Dominic had sat on his legs for 10 hours playing computer games without moving... [however, it] doesn't mean that the government should be putting health warnings on PlayStations."
How can you sit in one place for 10 hours?
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I mean, what kind of skinny-ass nerd wouldn't get up for food/soda at least once every 3 hours?
Repeal the DMCA!
What I want to know is what game was it that kept him so hooked, and where can I get a copy?
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
Which game?
Won't somebody please think of the children?
This is just biased reporting. You never read anything about the kid that missed the bus because he was playing video games before school, only to find out later the bus exploded when it crashed into a truckload of dynamite, or something.
Or that kid that is saved the humiliation of asking that one cheerleader out to prom because him and his buddies are planning a Halo Party that saturday.
Leave it to the media to only report on the bad things.
he could only get a darwin award if that blood clot formed in his dick and somehow stopped it working.. now perhaps if you sat on your dick for 10 hours... :)
His father told a newspaper: "This just proves that DVT can affect even the fittest and healthiest of children."
Somehow I doubt that a kid who can, and does, put in 10 hours straight playing videogames is the "fittest and healthiest of children." My guess is that the 10-hours type of kid is something less than fit and healthy.
I wish I had his attention span... but unfortunately I can't even finish a
It must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
wasn't there a case where an australian girl developed thrombosis from sitting on an international flight for too long? guess i should go googling...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
"The only risk factor we could find in this case was the fact that Dominic had sat on his legs for 10 hours playing computer games without moving... [however, it] doesn't mean that the government should be putting health warnings on PlayStations."
No, we should be putting them on XBoxes, which is what he was playing at the time (as suggested by the XBox photo attached to the article.) So now we know the truth: Microsoft products are a health problem.
I think this boy should attend a sitting competition. The world record is 167 days of sitting - on a small platform without a Playstation or similar entertainment devices.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
My first reaction, which I'm not terribly proud of, was:
"Ha ha! What a loser!"
Whenever your character jumps, you should also jump. And here's a tip: if you want to make a really sharp left turn, jerk the controller to the left. It helps.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Should I see a doctor?
Blood clot!? Pshaw! Walk it off soldier.
You shoulda seen our palms after trying to complete the Activision Decathalon on the Atari 2600. Bloddy mess! Or the sore thumbs from combo-attacks in the early fight games. Like two yams, I tell you!
I got over my ADD by having to wait for the tape to play the game into the C64. DungeonSomething took like 30 minutes. I treated that tape like the chalice in the Vatican. It slowly cranked while I shook like a drugged monkey watching it, screaming.
I learned the subtle differences in repetative images by playing Pitfall! I could time scorpion steps in my sleep.
When feeling lethargic, I put in Activision's Warlord. More epileptic-seizure-inducing flashes that a night at the Oscars. I think I'm still twitching.
And we had NO pause buttons, wimps!
Sheesh, kids got it so easy these days.
Will someone think of the children!!
In other news, runner dies of heart attack during morning jog.
2 points.
1. You can get hurt or die regardless of who you are and what you're doing.
2. This is only a story becuase of 2 other reasons.
2.a. Video-gamers are seen by the rest of society as lazy and dumb... so are naturally good targets.
2.b. This doesn't happen often so it's news.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
I was working in a NOCC about two years back when I got a blood clot too. It was pretty !@#$ing painful, I thought I'd gotten a hairline fracture in my pelvis -- I was just walking down the street when bam!
This resulted in a few days in the hospital (IIRC, the bill came out to something like $5k just for 2-3 days). After that, I was on fragmin which is injectable, and you do that yourself. In my case I found a spot around my bellbutton, pinch that area, then throw the needle in. Sounds terrible, wasn't that bad once you got the hang of stabbing yourself with a needle. Then six months of warfarin, a blood thinner. This is the prime ingredient in rat poison, I should mention, because it causes rats to just start bleeding to death.
All in all it was an entirely unpleasant experience. You also have to return to some location every two weeks for them to take blood to make sure your warfarin dose does not need tweaking.
I'm convinced that it was linked to my job at the NOCC but it wasn't until about a year later that I actually saw links coming out in the medical journals between sitting for long periods and DVT. Previously it was thought to occur mainly in long-distance flights. Also known as Second Class Syndrome (or something. =)
It seems to me that if DVT is caused by sitting, cramped, for long durations, where you're sitting and where you're going really don't factor in. The connection between sitting for long periods and getting DVT seems to be pretty clear.
Besides, it wouldn't suck to have OSHA mandate really awesome chairs for all of us, right? =D
My
Limekiller
How unfortunate... That he lived. For fucks sake, what a gawddamn loser.
And there already are plenty of warnings on video game consoles. I can't open a manual or catalog for my GC without repeated references to seizures. The only question is whether or not they'll add 'don't sit on your dead ass' warnings before or after the inevitable lawsuit. Oh, UK teen. Maybe there won't be a lawsuit.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yes but what type of "chair" was he sitting on? Surely he'd have to relieve himself in some way . . . without sitting *in it* afterwards.
no way i can sit for 10 hours in front of the screen, w/out having to get up and go walk outside for a smoke. And just think of all the exercise my lungs get w/ all the extra inhaling ;)
Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
Every current console game has warnings in the manual for seizures and most have warnings for repetitve stress injuries. I can see blood clots being added to the list.
Microsoft also recommends some healthy gaming methods that should be followed.
I don't expect to see a surgeon general's warning on game boxes anytime soon.
He's a scouser... nuff said
It's a shame that parents aren't teaching their kids proper gaming techniques.
Trust Your Technolust
I think this guy's pretty effectively removed himself from the gene pool already.
Rob
Let me see if I get this straight, you think is healthy for anyone to stay in a uncomfortable position for 10 straight hours? some common sense here people.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
(See subject.)
Obviously we can afford more dangerous videogames until this kind of idiocy results in death.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
A periodic brake reminder:
"You lazy bummer, stop salivating about Lara and take a break"
Or something about those paternalistic lines.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
[however, it] doesn't mean that the government should be putting health warnings on PlayStations
No, but I'm sure it'll happen anyways.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
He wasn't jumping on the "blame games" bandwagon.
There is some common sense left in the world.
doesn't mean that the government should be putting health warnings on PlayStations There ARE warnings. The safety warning says very clearly that for every hour of play, you should take a 15 minute break.
& I wish I knew the password to your heart . . . &
I find it extremely hard to find a game nowadays I can be interested in for more than two or three hours before wandering off to look at something shiny or a red car or ... what was I talking about?
now thats funny right there....I dont care who you are.......
Seriously. This is a case of video games being guilty by association. The kid's DVT was caused by sitting, not by video games. People get this on long airplane flights on a regular basis. Reason? Not the flying-- it's the *sitting*.
Oh well. Blaming it on the playstation makes a catchier headline.
Who knows? Maybe games like The Sims 2 will feature a similar messages or MMORPGs for players who remain active for long periods of time without being passive for X amount of time, presumably to eat and use the bathroom. (Loading times don't count)
Once, after playing Black & White for 6 hours straight, the lil' demon helper came out of nowhere and said "Its gettin' kinda late boss, maybe you should take a rest". I hadn't noticed the time, realised it was late indeed and I had work the next day, saved and quit.
That was cool, and apparently it was a life-saver!
You can't take the sky from me...
A) Wanna go ride bikes?
Dominic was a dumb ass
Who played too long with numb ass
Thank you.
I've read the article, and I think it just goes to show how biased the media are that this got reported with the headline " Computer game teenager gets DVT ", rather than something like " Teenager gets DVT from sitting awkwardly for too long ", which is what really happened. ;P
Surely the kid felt his legs going numb? I know that when I was a kid, I would have tended to move or something if I noticed that my leg was falling asleep. I bet some loony pro-health group somewhere will get all over gaming's case 'cos of this, now. Well done, BBC. At the very least, it was good to see that the doctor who commented showed some common sense, even if he did fall prone to the annoying habit of using "Playstations" as a synonym for "games consoles".
As I grew up and got older I noticed that I could no longer tolerate such marathon stretches of sitting.
Or maybe it was because I was sitting *more* often than when I was younger.
In any case, when it bothered me I'd figure out a new position, usually lying down or something. Using the same one forever is really problematic unless you happen to be using a $1000 chair or a $15 exercise ball.
Come on. Tell the complete story.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I thought about it for a while, and realized that I couldnt come up with anything witty or clever to say in this situation. I mean, really. The kid is just a moron.
We had to go over to the console to press the pause button. We also didn't spend 10 hours playing a game...
(Never thought I'd be participating in a convo about anti-coagulants on /., heh.)
I've been on Coumadin (commercial brand for warfarin) for around 3 years now to treat atrial fibrillation, i.e. arrhythmia or a persistently irregular heartbeat. There is no real cure for it, but sometimes electroshock therapy can "trick" the heart into resuming normal operation. I'm not kidding, either... probably one of the only times you would have the electro-paddles slapped on your chest and not be practically dead -- you know, <cue ER moment>"Clear!"</cue>
Of course, the only problem is that you have to have that done fairly soon after developing atrial fib, otherwise the chances of the shock treatment working plummet... for whatever reason, I'm not sure why. Something along the lines of breaking old habits.
Who else here, after learning of warfarin's "other" uses, said, "Well, how about that"? I remember flipping through the dictionary and stumbling upon the "w"'s one day... obviously there's a huge difference in the amount they would shove down a rat's throat and what's contained in these little pink pills, but yeah, that's enough to give your whole day a sickly green glow.
FYI, if you're taking warfarin, the biggest thing you should watch for is eating food rich in Vitamin K. Most green, leafy stuff: loaded.
Good luck to the others in this thread.