A game of friendly football came to a tragic end when Temasek
Polytechnic student Muhammad Khairil Muhamad Nizam suddenly
collapsed halfway through the match and died, reported The Straits
Times (ST).
According to the newspaper, the teen - who was to turn 20
next week - was chasing the ball in the match between his
team Marhaban Football Club and Nasir’s P Fotoball when without
warning, he collapsed and appeared to suffer from a bout of
fits.
Paramedics from the Singapore Civil Defence Force, who arrived
within 15 minutes, then proceeded to render emergency medical
treatment to the unconscious teen, said a spokesperson for the
force to Yahoo! Singapore.
However, the teen remained unconscious all the way to Changi
General Hospital. He was later diagnosed to have died of heart
failure.
Friends and family members of Khairil told the paper that he was
among the fittest players on the team and that he had started
playing football since Secondary One.
His family members are now waiting for the results of the
investigation to tell them what caused the teen’s heart to
fail.
Khairil’s death comes less than two weeks after the passing of
two other young teens who suddenly collapsed and died while playing
sports.
On Feb 27, 10-year-old Rishon Ng from Si Ling Primary School
collapsed while playing basketball during recess. He died less than
two hours later.
A day later, 18-year-old Jonathan Teo from Anglo-Chinese Junior
College collapsed and died after exercising in his condominium’s
gym.
According to an independent survey conducted by National Heart
Centre and Asiaone, about a fifth of Singaporeans do not seek help
for chest pains despite knowing that the symptom is an early
warning of a heart attack.
“Heart palpitations are a very frequent symptom in the general
population and it may account for about 15 per cent of clinic
consultations here at NHCS,” said Dr Ching
Chi Keong, senior consultant at the Department of Cardiology and
Director of Electrophysiology and Pacing at the National Heart
Centre Singapore (NHCS).
The article added that NHCS has been
seeing more patients with heart palpitations since 2008.
Some symptoms of a heart attack to look out for are:
from yahoo