It’s Official: It Was An Enlarged Heart

A second autopsy of Gaines Adams concluded that he did die from a a heart attack caused by enlarged heart.

So the next question people need to ask is how this professional athlete, who is poked and probed and tested all the time and under constant medical supervision by corporations worth about a billion dollars, died of a heart condition that should have been diagnosed years earlier? How did the medical staffs of the Chicago Bears, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Clemson University ALL miss this? Jesus, the combine is nothing but tests by all 32 teams. How the hell does this happen?

“Over the last 25 years, the NFL has been doing EKGs when players are drafted and specifically looking for issues [such as HCM],” said Dr. Christine Lawless, on the faculty of the University of Chicago and certified in both cardiology and sports medicine. “It will be interesting to see if when [Adams] went through [the NFL draft] in 2007, whether an echocardiogram was done? This is the general NFL approach … it may provide some clue as to what happened to Adams.”

Oh my. If someone saw this issue, noted it, and did nothing because they thought it was normal, there are going to be some serious changes to the way the medical exams for the combine (or any pre-draft exam) are done. Maybe a little good can come from this if some other players are saved by more thorough screenings in the future.