MarfanLife.net | News blog

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | ‘Why did he die?’ Ten weeks ago, [Fred Pearce’s] son died. Out of the blue, at the age of 19. One minute he was enjoying a Saturday morning jog round the back streets of Leeds, where he was a student, the next he felt weak and collapsed in a car park. Judging by the bashed state of his face in the hospital morgue later that day, he hadn’t even put out a hand as he fell.

Ancil’s ‘Eden’ needs to be restored: “When at the age of five Ancil Torres became partially blind, his parents, determined to give him a solid education, took him to the School for the Blind in Santa Cruz.

Torres was diagnosed as suffering from Marfan’s Syndrome, a genetic tissue disorder-likely inherited from his father who also suffered with the defect-which resulted in the dislocation of the lenses in his eyes and has left him with about 20 per cent vision. The year was 1969 and in those days the School for the Blind, which was government-assisted, functioned as a boarding school for visually-impaired students.”

New Haven Register - News - 05/15/2005 - Rare heart condition kills young athletes: … “The most common cause of death is a problem called hyperthrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, cardiologists said.” …

“Other causes of sudden death include congenital coronary artery anomalies; myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart); Wolff-Parkison-White Syndrome, which makes people susceptible to arrhythmia; and Marfan syndrome.

People with Marfan syndrome tend to be tall and have long arms, desirable traits in a basketball player. They also have a high rate of aortic aneurysms, or bulges in the main artery leading out of the heart.

Most athletes with Marfan syndrome are screened out before they can play, Drury said.”

I’m pretty sure that last statement is false. We need the doctors, or schools, to do much more screening for Marfan and other heart disorders. -Jeanette

Shelbyville Times-Gazette: Story: Sports screenings held: “More than 100 public school athletes had physical examinations on Saturday at the Omni Center on Colloredo Boulevard where the sports screenings met requirements of the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association.

Staff at the center and seven area physicians conducted the exams at no charge to the student athletes or their parents”…

Members of the Boston Beanstalks are very tired of the same old lines | Providence, R.I. | Your Life: “How’s the weather up there?”