A pair of UC health doctors spoke via a Zoom call for nearly an hour Thursday afternoon, detailing the safety status of Bill Damar Hamlin, who has made “significant improvement in his condition over the past 24 hours.”
Among these enhancements are Hamlin being alert and responsive with the ability to move his arms and legs, while being able to communicate with his doctors, nurses and family members by writing on a whiteboard. Additionally, Hamlin’s neurological condition and function is intact after suffering a cardiac arrest Monday night.
Hamlin remains in intensive care in the surgical and trauma ICU at the University of Cincinnati hospital, according to UC Health physicians William Knight IV, MD, and Timothy Pritts, MD, who were on the Zoom call and are among the many individuals at the hospital. . helping to treat Hamlin. He is still intubated to help with breathing, and the next hurdle in his recovery process is progressing to breathing on his own, according to both doctors.
“It’s not just that the lights are on. We know he’s home. It seems like all cylinders are firing inside his brain,” said Dr. Pritts.
When Hamlin woke up Wednesday night, one of the first questions he asked in writing was who won the Bills-Bengals game. The doctors told him: “You won. You won the game of life.”
As Dr. Pritts and Dr.
“The Bills coaching staff that was with him immediately recognized that this was not a run of the mill injury and that they had a major event on their hands and responded immediately and got the emergency response team involved in his care. And with him really, it went as well as something like this can go under very challenging circumstances, and they did a fantastic job and that’s why we’re here today,” said Dr. Pritts.
One of the many members of the Bills training staff who stepped up was Bills assistant athletic trainer Denny Kellington, who administered CPR to Hamlin on the field. Both doctors confirmed that when Hamlin collapsed on the field, he had a pulse and then lost it, so the decision was made to have Bills staff perform CPR.
“Not just saving his life, but his neurological function. The reason we’re talking about recovering his neurological function is the real critical importance of immediate, good, high-quality CPR and immediate access to defibrillation “Dr. Knight said.
Since waking up in the hospital Wednesday night, Hamlin has been holding “a lot of people’s hands” as he continues to show improvement through Thursday.
Dr. Pritts and Dr. Knight said the next step in Hamlin’s recovery is to demonstrate that he can breathe fully on his own and continue to demonstrate healthy neurological status and function.
A best case scenario is to get him back to the health level he was at before the match.
“It’s best to take him as he was at 8 o’clock Monday night. He’s completely neurologically intact, strong, good lung function, no cardiac dysfunction with his heart. The best outcome would be that that was before that. everything happened,” said Dr. Knight.
This story will continue to be updated.
