DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Sudden cardiac arrest is among the leading killers of student athletes in the country, but two local organizations teamed up to try and prevent that.
Students of Volusia County schools had the chance to get their hearts screened for free at Daytona International Speedway through this weekend for an annual event.
It is the third year these heart screenings are being offered as part of AdventHealth’s annual free physical event. Several athletes have already had life-saving treatment after these screenings found underlying conditions that lead to cardiac arrest.
Carter Weiss, now a junior at Spruce Creek High School, was screened in 2021.
“I signed him up for that and it was a shock,” said his mother, Becky Stewart.
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Stewart said they got the call from a pediatric cardiologist a few days later. Carter’s EKG came back abnormal and additional testing was required. He was eventually diagnosed with Long QT syndrome.
“I still have it, but I had to get a surgery to remove the nerve chain in the left side of my body which basically just slows down,” Weiss said.
Erik Nason with AdventHealth explained a condition like Weiss’ could have led to a collapse.
“An abnormality there could cause the rhythm to go array. It could make it go fast or slow and it causes the heart to go into that sudden cardiac arrest,” he said.
Nason said because EKGs aren’t routinely added to wellness visits or standard physicals typically, bringing the screenings to their free physical event was an opportunity for them to jump on a deadly problem.
“One in 300 student athletes have some sort of underlying heart condition that could be detected with an ECG,” he said.
While the AdventHealth teams conduct the physicals, their partner at the event — Who We Play For — brings in its portable EKG equipment for the heart screenings.
At last year’s event, there were over 1,000 students with 38 eventually flagged from the screenings. Five of those 38 were deemed high risk.
“Five out of a thousand, that doesn’t sound like a whole bunch until you put a face and the value of a young person’s life. That’s an incredible statistic,” said Shawn Sima, one of Who We Play For’s directors.
The nonprofit was started by a group of friends in Cocoa Beach after their teammate, Rafe Maccarone, collapsed and died on the soccer field from sudden cardiac arrest in 2007.
Maccarone had a heart condition but didn’t know it.
Now, the organization conducts heart screenings for thousands of students across the country each year and Sima said they have caught over 300 potentially deadly heart conditions that students otherwise wouldn’t have known about.
“It’s well over 300 and it has the potential to be even more. We try to follow up and get families to report back but we don’t get all of the data,” he said.
Others, like Wess, said they are ready to pay it forward.
“I’m way happier today than I was a long time ago because I think I’ve been able to appreciate life more,” Weiss said.
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