 "There has been a rise in heart attacks in young people. AI-generated image")
A nine-year-old girl’s death in Rajasthan due to a suspected heart attack has put a spotlight on the recent rise in such incidents in children. Prachi Kumawat, a Class 4 student at Adarsh Vidya Mandir in Danta, Sikar, was opening her lunchbox when she fell unconscious.
Despite efforts to save her, the girl was declared dead by doctors. While Prachi’s family did not carry out an autopsy, she is suspected to have died of a heart attack.
Similar fatalities have been recorded in children in India in recent years. But can children have heart attacks? We will explain.
9-YO Rajasthan girl dies of ‘heart attack’
Prachi Kumawat was at school when she reportedly suffered a heart attack.
“It happened around 11 am Tuesday… She dropped her lunchbox and collapsed. We were all on school grounds at the time, so we rushed her to the hospital,” Nand Kishore, principal of Adarsh Vidya Mandir in Danta, Sikar, told Indian Express.
He said that as Prachi’s situation did not improve, they took her to a nearby Community Health Centre (CHC). “There, the medical staff took care of her and she initially seemed to have recovered.”
Speaking to NDTV, Dr Subhash Verma, who attended to Prachi at the community health centre in Danta, said: “The school staff and teachers brought the nine-year-old girl to us. She was unconscious and gasping and was having difficulty breathing. There was no BP pulse and her heart was not beating. We started CPR, gave her oxygen and emergency drugs, along with injection and drip.”
“We did our best to revive her, but then realising her condition was not getting better, we called an ambulance and referred her to a hospital in Sikar. If there is a delay in bringing a patient, people should immediately give CPR. It is a rare case to have this in children. Sometimes, there could be congenital heart disease or disturbance in [the] electrical impulse, and parents may not have noticed them. But it should be investigated,” he added.
Dr RK Jangid, the doctor in charge at Danta CHC, said they tried to revive the girl for nearly an hour and a half. “Prima facie it appeared to be a heart attack and she also responded to the heart treatment that we were giving her like CPR and oxygen and drugs. She revived and that’s why we put her in an ambulance and sent her to the district hospital in Sikar,” Dr Jangid told NDTV.
“You cannot establish definitively that she died of a heart attack without a post-mortem. She definitely appeared to be suffering from a cardiac arrest. It’s possible that she had a congenital heart disease that was never discovered and could have been aggravated all of a sudden due to some other condition,” the doctor said.
According to the school’s principal, the girl had not attended school for the past few days due to a slight cold.
Prachi’s last rites were conducted at about 4 pm on Tuesday, as per the newspaper report.
Recent cases of heart attacks in kids in India
In January, an eight-year-old girl of Class 3 died of cardiac arrest in Chamarajanagar, 175 km from Karnataka’s Bengaluru. She had collapsed while presenting her notebook to a teacher in the classroom. The girl was rushed to the JSS Hospital, where doctors confirmed she was brought dead.
The same month, Gargi Ranpara, 8, collapsed in the lobby of her Zebar School for Children in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. While she received CPR and emergency hospital care, the girl was declared dead due to cardiac arrest.
Last December, a 14-year-old boy from Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh died during training for a sports event at his school. Another casualty of cardiac arrest in the city was an 8-year-old who fell unconscious while playing with friends.
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Heart attack vs Cardiac arrest
Heart attack and cardiac arrest are different.
A heart attack, also known as acute myocardial infarction, occurs when a blockage in the arteries stops the flow of oxygen-rich blood to a part of the heart muscle. If the blood flow is not restored quickly, a “heart attack can cause permanent heart damage and death”, as per the Cleveland Clinic.
On the other hand, cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops beating or beats so rapidly that it stops pumping blood. People usually lose consciousness and become unresponsive during cardiac arrest, which can be fatal if they do not get emergency treatment such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation.
“When the heart’s pumping ability weakens, the risk of cardiac arrest increases, and one of the main culprits behind this weakened function is indeed a heart attack,” Dr Mukharjee Madivada, Senior Interventional Cardiologist and Managing Director of the Pulse Heart Center in Hyderabad, told South First.
“Nevertheless, a cardiac arrest is a more critical situation because, without immediate intervention, it can prove fatal within minutes. Unlike a heart attack, which is primarily related to blood flow, a cardiac arrest can be triggered by various factors such as high potassium levels or dangerously low oxygen levels in the body,” he added.
Do children have heart attacks?
Yes, but it is extremely rare.
Research has shown that cardiac arrest impacts about one to three children per 100,000 every year. It is often reported in kids who seem healthy and have no previous diagnosis of heart conditions.
In several cases, kids show no warning signs before they suffer a cardiac arrest.
There could be several reasons for heart attacks in children. Congenital heart defects, issues with the heart’s structure that are present at birth, are a leading cause of sudden cardiac arrest in kids.
“Sudden cardiac arrest in children, though rare, can occur due to undiagnosed underlying heart conditions like congenital heart defects, arrhythmias, or genetic disorders such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, Dr Vittal Kumar Kesireddy, a Senior Paediatrician, CARE Hospitals, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, told NDTV.
An arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, happens when the heart beats too quickly or too slowly, or with an irregular rhythm. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a genetic condition in which the heart muscle becomes thickened, obstructing blood flow out of the heart.
Children can also have acquired heart conditions, which develop after birth. Rheumatic heart disease, Kawasaki disease, as well as chest trauma, which occurs due to injury or an accident, according to Medical News Today.
Respiratory conditions, such as severe asthma attacks and pneumonia, could cause oxygen deprivation (hypoxia) and contribute to cardiac events if not treated.
Are heart diseases becoming more frequent in young people?
Local cardiologists have flagged a surge in heart attacks in young individuals post- COVID-19 , citing stress and lifestyle changes as possible contributing factors, as per South First.
Lifestyle factors, such as poor diet and lack of physical activity, can also lead to early onset of heart issues. “The alarming increase in childhood obesity and the incidence of type 2 diabetes also increases the risk. Being informed, routine health checkups help to detect abnormalities that may have previously been overlooked entirely,” Dr Deepak Ugra, Paediatrician, Lilavati Hospital, Mumbai, told NDTV.
Experts recommend that children who have a family history of heart-related conditions should undergo a medical checkup.
Parents should also not dismiss unexplained fainting or seizure episodes in their kids and should consult a doctor.
With inputs from agencies