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Dance Dance Revolution Hastens Heart Attack
Thanks to TheOmahaChannel.com for its story discussing a 15-year old girl whose heart stopped while playing arcade Dance Dance Revolution. According to the piece: "[Kimber] Wilson was playing the game Dance Dance Revolution at a Bellevue arcade with a friend June 22 when she fell to the floor. The arcade owners gave her CPR, then a police officer took over. Paramedics shocked her several times with a defibrillator at the arcade to get her heart working again." The diagnosis was "hypertrophy cardiomyopathy", a genetic problem (which could have been triggered by any exercise) in which "the walls around her heart are so thick that her heart wasn't getting the signals to beat." Fortunately, Kimber was "soon... back to hanging out with her friends at the arcade", albeit with a pacemaker, commenting: "I might try Dance Dance Revolution, but I'm thinking no."
It was "a genetic problem" ... any excercise would have triggered this. Nothing to do with DDR.
It's not, this could have occurred at any time.
Why even relate this to the game?
The Political Programmer
Any form or exercise would have caused this issue for the person in question. They had a precursory cardiac condition. DDR had no more to do with this than walking biking, running or anything else. Could the Writers try to be a little less inflammatory in the future?
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
This was a genetic problem that could have occured due to running or swimming. DDR was involved so naturally it makes headlines on /.
/. - strike 4525452 =) /for_the_humor_impaired_this_is_placed!
gg
I'm tired of north american girls taking such little interest in games.
The fact that she played so much it almost KILLED her counterintuitively brings a smile to my face..
Another win for the virtual world. At least she's not puking her guts out like so many other 15+ year old girls >_>
The other good news from this article is that due to this accident they were able to discover her medical condition fairly early.
We should send her a console with some good girl games to show her we care ^_^
She's 15 years old, and the first time she's been active enough to have her birth defect cause problems is while playing DDR.
No wonder we're a nation of fatasses.
The jokes don't start coming for this one. Come on guys heart attacks are serious and I don't think you would want us laughing if you were having one.
Creative Demolition
Another warning label in life, brought on by a broken US judicial system that awards vast amounts of punitive damages to the occasional winner of a bullshit lawsuit and ignores common sense.
May we never see th
I'm a 3rd year med student, by no means a doctor, but i've learned extensively about this topic. Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a horrible condition that causes the heart to be grossly enlarged in diameter but doesn't pump harder proportionally. HCM unfortunately does not have a good prognosis.
It's a diease that is often involved when you hear about the high school quarterback or basketball center, "in perfect shape" who dies all of a sudden on the field.
Horrible condition, and as you might ascertain from the above example, it unfortunately is NOT something that can be predicted in the general population. They can be assymptomatic until one day you die.
Anyway, my point in titling this "GROSSLY misleading" is that this event, while tragic, did not necessarily have to do with DDR and more to do with the poor kid's cardiac deformity. I actually recently prepared a lecture for a group of surgeons in Chicago (about medicine and video games!) and one slide actually sited the Slashdot-mentioned story about the health BENEFITS of dance dance revolution. DDR has caused many people to become more active, less or even non-obese and has perhaps saved hundreds if not thousands of lives (or made them better/healthier). Just food for thought.
The posting leads the reader into believing that Dance Dance Revolution helped hasten the heart attack. This is completely untrue.
However, the article notes:
In fact, it's known that Dance Dance Revolution had nothing to do with the heart attack. "The heart problem is genetic and the incident prompted members of her family to get tested."
I know it's futile to ask, but could the editors please at least read the linked articles to ensure the writeups are accurate?
I wonder if someone could write up a provocative enough writeup and sneak a shock picture past?No, not during, but afterward feel free to chuckle all you want. I'll join you.
This is one time that I hope the Lieberman's of the world unite to ban the Dance Dance menace. I am tired of going to the arcade at the mall and beating the high score on the Galaga machine only to see all of the teenage girls are giggling over the skinny Asian kid jumping up and down to bad techno music. Yeah, I am at least 10 years older than the girls but Galaga players want some jail bait attention too.
Defribrilator Defribrilator Resuscitation
The lead isn't misleading in the slightest, despite all your whining. It clearly states that this was a congenital deformity that many things besides DDR could have triggered. Did you guys even read the lead? Are you just getting inflamed because of the headline? Do we need to start saying RTFL, now?
Shut up, you little whiners.
This was a human interest story that would be accessible to all of you because it incorporated a familiar nerd topic. It helped bring your attention to this unfortunately too common disease, as few other articles could have.
Idiots.
Lieberman already dropped out of the race, he doesn't need more haphazard reasons to blame all the ills of sociey on video games.
Glog!
A Bellevue teenager whose heart stopped while playing a video game last week is recovering, thanks to a device and some heroes who knew how to use it.
/. editors who thought this was newsworthy enough to bring to the global masses. lay off the crack guys.
what device? what heroes? the only device mentioned was the device which checked her and her family members for evidence of the genetic disease.
and were the heroes the ones who called the EMTs?
"You could be asleep, walking running, sitting down to eat. It can hit ya," said Eddie Wilson, Kimber's father.
This wouldn't have made news if she got the attack while eating her dinner. Her circumstances had her playing a game and this has launched this heart attack into the media.
what a complete crock of shit.
and thank you to the
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Don't use this tale as an excuse not to try DDR! I mean if you're susceptible to this genetic condition (and it's a faint chance that you are) you're probably going to peg it one day in any case. But the quality of life of a non-exerciser will be increased no end by doing some exercise (speaking as a convert myself).
Video games should only be played by true professionals, there is just such a high level of danger involved.
Just look at this list of injuries:
dizziness, altered vision, muscle twitches, loss of awareness, disorientation, motion sickness, Eye Strain, Back Injury, Photosensitive Seizures, hand-arm vibration syndrome, blisters, friction burns, lacerations, carpal-tunnel, "Nintendo Thumb", bruises, electric shock, the many horrors of DDR, and now heart attacks.
In the wrong hands video game consoles, and computers running video games are death machines!
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Hypertrophic = enlarged, cardiac=heart and myopathy = muscle disease
Anyway, I went and got a tatoo of the DNA section with the mutation in it. It was quite the interesting education gauge. I got double takes from people eduated in science, and "Hey dude! cool roller coaster thingy tatoo!" from the less educated, which then led in turn to "Hey, what's your phone number!"
..........FULL STOP.
I am in perfect health as a result of sitting on my fat ass, drinking beer, eating Cheetos, and reading Slashdot.
No seriously, I'm doing that right +++ATH @#*&@*#$ NO HEARTBEAT
The latest Slashdot meme.
Don't think DDR is so safe!
I myself went blind and deaf just from watching people play it!
Sha-zing!
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
...I've had a full Cardiac Checkup (all my brothers did after our dad had a heart attack at age 55 - which in Belgium is far less common than in the US of A). Stress ECG, the works. Best bit? The Ultrasound they did of my heart, you can see your own heart beating on the screen. Anyway, one normal sized heart in this body :o)
I am NaN
she was playing DDR when it happened, instead of walking to school, going for a run etc. The arcade owner knew CPR and probably saved her life. If this had happened while she was alone, then who knows what could have transpired. ;)
So, one could argue, DDR actually SAVED a life
I was playing at an arcade, and my foot went through the arrow on the pad. It got stuck, I lost my balance, and I fell backwards, nailing my back on the bar. It was very painful; I had to have a few people help me up and out of the place. But they didn't make me pay to replace the arrow, so that was okay. I wasn't able to play for a few weeks, but whatever. I'm fine now
Any guesses as to how big the lawsuit would have been in the US against the bar for faulty equipment? And this guy was happy because he didn't have to pay to fix the machine.
Rod Taylor
I don't think there is an expletive available to expess my contempt for these fact skewers.
Journalism is a myth.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Ok, lets all say the exact same thing here guys: DDR didn't cause the problem genetics did. Then lets mod them all up, instead of redudant....I get sick of reading the same damn entry 20 times, and wish it would get modded down so this wouldnt happen...
And on another note, I bet the arcade owner was ALL too happy to give the 15 year old girl CPR ^^
nuff said
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Good post. Unfortunately, I read it as "You could be asleep, walking, running, sitting down to eat. I can hit ya", implying that the causes of the attack could be sleep, walking, running, sitting or a punch from your father. It makes sense both ways, I guess.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Why, Batman used the Batfibriator from his Batmobile, with his, er, Batbattery to foil the evil video game menace.
Dunna, dunna, dunna, dunna, BATMAN!!
BIFF, BASH, BOSH, LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN, shake it!
Simply IGNORE articles like this, and PLEASE do not submit them when you see one, all you are doing is increasing hits/importance to an article that otherwise would be ignored by anyone who is not a geek (like us) Thanks .
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
There's actually two PS2 games that are designed as rhythm games using the controller instead of the dance pad. 'Frequency' and it's sequel 'Amplitude' both work this way. I've played both.
You only have three triggers instead of four. However, you have multiple 'tracks' of the songs to complete, between which you have to switch. Surprisingly addicting despite the lack of physical activity, and being less physical the more difficult levels get much more complicated than DDR.
As a lot of folks have mentioned above, the article has nothing to do with DDR, and the girl's being in arcade at the time when heart attack hit her in fact saved her life because there were so many people around her, although it's strange the disease hasn't been discovered earlier for the poor girl.
:) I'm by far not the strongest person on the Earth and I have arythmia, which is also a heart defect. I have never felt better in my life than on that dancing stage!
I must say that DDR is actually very refreshing. I have a soft mat and a metal dancing stage (a self-made one, say 'no' to R*dOct*ne and other ripoffers!) at home and go to dance at the arcade often. All in all it takes me about ten hours a week or more, and that's great. Regular excersizing is something you must force yourself to do, DDR is something you must force yourself to stop doing .
Dancing games are also about socialization. You can't underestimate the feeling it gives you when people around are watching and cheering for you. So, shame on lame reporters who keep using the same old tricks to lure readers into believing facts that aren't.
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All they need is a disclaimer on the machine
Already got those, thank you vary much. Excerpts from the Dance Dance Revolution Konamix (for PlayStation) instruction manual:
However, as almost all DDR coin-op machines are imported from Japan, the player may not have been able to read warnings printed in the Japanese language.
...and am going to carve a fat chick with a slash through it on the side of this machine. LOL
However, the warning label on a DDR machine (except for those few horrid DDR USA machines) is probably written in Japanese.
only to see all of the teenage girls are giggling over the skinny Asian kid jumping up and down to bad techno music.
Then propose to work with the arcade operator to convert the cabinet to a StepMania machine, without the "bad techno music" as you call it.
you could have a thousand kids die on a ddr machine in an american arcade, Konami wouldnt be liable one bit. Why? Because the DDR machines arent technicly legal. If anyone has read the legal stuff that shows on the screens before the title screen: "This game is for sale and use in Japan only". The only reason the machines are in the US is because Konami makes money off machines bought to be illegally imported to the US. Therefor, they get money and arent at all liable for the machines over here. Sweet deal, eh?
It could have happened while some poor schmuck was fucking her. Imagine the headlines then.
Even extremely active sex is not as much of a workout as Cosmo and Maxim like to pretend it is.
Honestly, I think running is probably the best cardiovascular workout you can get.
+++ATH0
You are completely right, however, I'm keeping a watch on this story with Feedster. So far, it has been retold about five times, and in two of them, the actual cause of the problem was not clear. Next cycle, the cause will be totally omitted. Next cycle, all references to the original story will be lost... In a few more cycles DDR will be cited as the primary cause, mark my words.
DDR is a good game, and not only for kids. But journalists will do anything to be seen as the saviors of society from evil.
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"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
We really wish your daughter to get well soon. Good luck to you and your family.
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