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Dance Dance Revolution Hastens Heart Attack

Posted by simoniker on from the extreme-paranoia dept.

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."

7 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Complete crap by ubrkl · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was "a genetic problem" ... any excercise would have triggered this. Nothing to do with DDR.

    1. Re:Complete crap by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Max Unlimited on Heavy will give anyone a heart attack ;-)

      Honestly though, DDR is often my sole exercise for a week. A great way for geeks to get into shape without having to go outside. :)

      --
      "I only speak the truth"
      Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
  2. GROSSLY misleading by BTWR · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hi guys,

    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.

    1. Re:GROSSLY misleading by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 4, Informative
      The doctor in question is the Brazilian surgeon Dr. Randas J.V. Batista, and the procedure is slightly more refined than "lobbing off half the heart and stiching the rest back up". :-)

      Here is a reference.

  3. This posting is a troll and extremely misleading. by Scott+Robinson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The posting leads the reader into believing that Dance Dance Revolution helped hasten the heart attack. This is completely untrue.

    However, the article notes:

    "You could be asleep, walking running, sitting down to eat. It can hit ya," said Eddie Wilson, Kimber's father.

    "She was in the right place with all the right people around her," said mother Julie Wilson.

    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?
  4. I hate Dance Dance. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  5. DDR = by k4rm4_p0l7c3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Defribrilator Defribrilator Resuscitation