Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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?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
"DDR was involved so naturally it makes headlines on /."
Remember when GTA3 was 'linked' to an isolated sniper shooting? No direct connection, but it was enough to get lawsuits filed against Sony and Rockstar. That's why it made it to Slashdot. Not because of the game, but because of the inevitable fallout from it. This isn't a reflection of Slashdot, it's a reflection of the tards like Liberman trying to gain political power.
"Derp de derp."
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.
Another win for the virtual world. At least she's not puking her guts out like so many other 15+ year old girls.
One look at the picture in the article suggests that she's not bulimic. Or, if she is, she's not very good at it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This isn't a national headline story without the DDR non-issue. They take a not important aspect of the story and make the headline with it in order to capture peoples attention. Then they mention in passing that it wasn't the games fault.
It's standard reporting trickery.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
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?