Chest Blows Trigger Commotio Cordis

Commotio cordis is a heart failure that occurs if you get hit in the chest at just the right time, causing a disturbance in the electrical impulses that directly affects your heart rhythm and in most cases kills unless you are treated within about a 3-minute window. In reported cases, a small, fast-moving object such as a baseball or hockey puck strikes the chest over the heart during a vulnerable phase of the cardiac cycle, triggering ventricular fibrillation in otherwise healthy, often young people, and survival depends on immediate CPR and rapid defibrillation.

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