Tarrant County 7th grader saved after collapsing during football game
A Tarrant County seventh grader was saved after suffering a cardiac arrest during a football game Monday night.
The child collapsed during a game at Euless Trinity High School, and was saved by a fast-acting staff member who used an Automated External Defibrillator, or AED, and performed CPR until the child began breathing again. The child, a student at Haltom Middle School, was transported to Cook Children’s Hospital and is reportedly recovering in good condition.
Saad Rajabali, an assistant athletic trainer and science teacher at Trinity High School, said he received a call from a contract athletic trainer telling him that a player had collapsed during the game. Rajabali grabbed an AED from his office and headed straight to the field, where all game play had stopped.
“They were in the process of flipping the kid over, and so at that point I just put the AED on him,” Rajabali said. The AED advised for a shock, so Rajabali shocked the child and then immediately began chest compressions until the child began breathing again, he said. The child was then transported to the hospital.
Cardiac arrests are different from heart attacks, and people of any age can suffer cardiac arrests. Cardiac arrests are almost always fatal, and there are no warning signs before they strike, Dr. Tom Aufderheide, a professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, told the Star-Telegram in January.
Rajabali said using the AED and performing CPR was second nature after all his training to become an athletic trainer. Rajabali’s training is part of a broader effort at the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district to increase awareness of and knowledge about cardiac emergencies. The school district, which educates about 23,000 students, is working toward making CPR a skill that every student learns at least once a year starting in fifth grade, said Superintendent Joe Harrington.
“We want to get more hands on the mannequins, because we need the muscle memory,” Harrington said.
The school district is also the largest in Texas to have a cardiac emergency response plan, which recently became a requirements for all Texas public schools. Harrington advised other school districts to contact the American Heart Association and work with them to create their emergency plans.
For Rajabali, saving a life was just part of his job, he said. He credited his colleagues at the school district for the work they’ve done to make AEDs widely accessible throughout campuses.
“It’s like scoring a touchdown,” he said. “I did my job and I executed it.”
