|
|
|
St. Charles, IL —
After 18-year-old St. Charles North student Lauren Laman suddenly died three years ago at school during a drill-tream practice because of a heart abnormality, things seemed to change at St. Charles Community Unit District 303.
“That’s when they started doing it, the following year,” said Mark Claussner, a District 303 parent, of when the district started giving free electrocardiograms, ECG or EKG, to high school students after Laman’s death.
During school today , the district is offering St. Charles North students an opportunity to get an electrocardiogram from the Midwest Heart Foundation’s Young Hearts 4 Life program for free. This is the third year of the program, which alternates schools each year. It started at North in 2008 and was at St. Charles East High School last year.
Claussner is familiar with the process himself. His daughter Erika, a senior at St. Charles East, went through heart surgery in the summer of 2008 after an EKG found an irregularity in her heart.
Erika, formerly a St. Charles East cheerleader, was found to have a heart valve in the wrong place. Her parents say the EKG screening was an integral part in finding the abnormality, which was later fixed with surgery.
While Erika is now healthy and out of cheerleading, her father Mark said he wants to see EKGs made mandatory across the state.
“It can’t be stressed enough,” Mark said. “If It wasn’t for the test, (Erika’s disease) never would have been detected. The test became the most important thing in the world to me.”
A fantastic opportunity
Audra Christenson, the assistant principal for activities and operations at St. Charles North, helped kickstart the program in 2008 at North and said it has expanded past what she thought it could be.
Christenson said they had been trying to alert parents to the free screenings for months, and thus far, it has yielded great returns. She said that as of the week before the screenings, they had nearly 1,000 out of about 2,100 students at North signed up to be screened.
“That’s a fantastic number to have,” Christenson said, adding that their goal was about 50 percent. “Yes it’s free, but it’s a personal choice. ... It’s something you wouldn’t receive from a stethoscope in an exam.”
Dr. Joseph Marek, who helps oversee Young Hearts 4 Life and works with Oakbrook Terrace-based practice Midwest Heart Specialists, said the program started in 2006 after hearing news that certain countries in Europe had success with reducing sudden cardiac death through EKGs.
After 18-year-old St. Charles North student Lauren Laman suddenly died three years ago at school during a drill-tream practice because of a heart abnormality, things seemed to change at St. Charles Community Unit District 303.
“That’s when they started doing it, the following year,” said Mark Claussner, a District 303 parent, of when the district started giving free electrocardiograms, ECG or EKG, to high school students after Laman’s death.
During school today , the district is offering St. Charles North students an opportunity to get an electrocardiogram from the Midwest Heart Foundation’s Young Hearts 4 Life program for free. This is the third year of the program, which alternates schools each year. It started at North in 2008 and was at St. Charles East High School last year.
Claussner is familiar with the process himself. His daughter Erika, a senior at St. Charles East, went through heart surgery in the summer of 2008 after an EKG found an irregularity in her heart.
Erika, formerly a St. Charles East cheerleader, was found to have a heart valve in the wrong place. Her parents say the EKG screening was an integral part in finding the abnormality, which was later fixed with surgery.
While Erika is now healthy and out of cheerleading, her father Mark said he wants to see EKGs made mandatory across the state.
“It can’t be stressed enough,” Mark said. “If It wasn’t for the test, (Erika’s disease) never would have been detected. The test became the most important thing in the world to me.”
A fantastic opportunity
Audra Christenson, the assistant principal for activities and operations at St. Charles North, helped kickstart the program in 2008 at North and said it has expanded past what she thought it could be.
Christenson said they had been trying to alert parents to the free screenings for months, and thus far, it has yielded great returns. She said that as of the week before the screenings, they had nearly 1,000 out of about 2,100 students at North signed up to be screened.
“That’s a fantastic number to have,” Christenson said, adding that their goal was about 50 percent. “Yes it’s free, but it’s a personal choice. ... It’s something you wouldn’t receive from a stethoscope in an exam.”
Dr. Joseph Marek, who helps oversee Young Hearts 4 Life and works with Oakbrook Terrace-based practice Midwest Heart Specialists, said the program started in 2006 after hearing news that certain countries in Europe had success with reducing sudden cardiac death through EKGs.
Marek, who said he learned how to do EKGs in about 10 minutes, said he believed he could have more success teaching parents how to do it rather than getting many nurses to take off work.
“The parents were great, they performed marvelously and the rest was history,” Marek said, adding that the program had just given it’s 50,000th EKG in October. Marek said the first time they did it was at a middle school with 65 students. They now have the program at about 10 to 11 high schools per year with 1,000s of students.
“Sudden death does occur,” Marek said. “It happens to about 3,000 kids per year in the United States and 60 percent can be detected with an EKG. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best thing we have.”
They’re here because of you
While District 303 does offer the free EKG service, Superintendent Donald Schlomann doesn’t think they will ever be required, nor does he think they should be within the district or the state.
“There’s a cost-benefit requirement in requiring that for every student,” Schlomann said. “And if you look at the odds, they’re substantially in favor of the student being healthy and not ill.”
While there are 250,000 to 450,000 sudden cardiac arrests each year in the United States, the Mayo Clinic staff said in the article “Sudden death in young people — Heart problems often blamed” that very few occur in young people and only some die from the sudden cardiac arrest.
At the same time, as Schlomann and others in the district are far too familiar with, some are ill, as is the case with Laman. Schlomann said for rare cases such as Laman’s, the district likes being able to give their students an opportunity to get a free EKG screening.
“It’s something we like to provide our parents,” Schlomann said, adding that normal physicals really don’t go far enough to find if anything is truly wrong. “Anytime we can save one child, that’s an important thing.”
The Mayo Clinic said coroners find that two-thirds of the time, the sudden cardiac death of a young person is caused by a heart abnormality and is usually by those who are participating in physical activity.
District spokesman Jim Blaney, who called last year’s event at St. Charles East “amazing” with an army of parent volunteers, said most students ended up checking out fine, but there were a couple of cases where they may have found a problem.
“Nothing extreme,” Blaney said. “But they said they’re going to want to go see their doctor.”
For Claussner, his volunteerism at the St. Charles East screening event last year was affirmation that his daughter and Laman’s illnesses were not all for naught.
“What really felt good was that I felt Erika had something to do with that,” Claussner said. “I remember telling her ‘These kids, they’re here because of you and Lauren.’ This is something we brought to their attention. ... It’s fantastic these guys are doing this.”
Hearts of the young
-More than 7,000 people younger than 18 die from undetected heart conditions each year, with athletes suffering that fate two to three times higher than less-active youths.
-Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, is the most common cause for cardiac death in young adults. HCM is a genetic abnormality present in one in 500 people. The disease enlarges the left ventricle of the heart, which during exercise can trigger heart rhythm disturbances.
-40 percent of young adults at risk for sudden death might be detected by electrocardiogram.
Source: The Midwest Heart Foundation
How much does it cost?
According to Central DuPage Hospital, an EKG or ECG test costs about $247.
