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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartDisea ... d=13055595

High School Basketball Star Dies on Court
16-Year-Old Wes Leonard Collapsed After Scoring Overtime Victory Shot, Clinching Perfect Season

Celebration turned to tragedy Thursday night at a Michigan high school when 16-year-old Wes Leonard collapsed on the basketball court after scoring the game-winning shot in overtime, helping his team clinch a perfect season.

Paramedics took Leonard to a defibrillator on the Fennville High School court. Soon after he was rushed by ambulance to nearby Holland Hospital, where he died two hours later at 10:40 p.m., the Holland Sentinel reported.

The cause of death remains unclear. Breed said an autopsy will likely be conducted.

Efforts to develop more sensitive screening tests that could detect risk factors for sudden death, such as cardiomyopathy, are under way. In a study published in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, recording the heart's electrical activity during exercise by electrocardiography had no effect on predicting young athletes' risk for cardiac arrest.


In an interview last week, Fennville coach Ryan Klinger told the Sentinel Leonard was recovering from the flu.


Leonard was also quarterback for the Fennville football team, which won the Southwestern Athletic Conference North Division championship this season. Leonard threw seven touchdowns in the winning game, according to the Sentinel.

In an interview Tuesday, Klingler told the Sentinel that Leonard took care of his body "better than probably anybody I've ever coached," adding that the teen spent "a lot of time on his own in the weight room."

Cardiologist: Wes Leonard's heart failure could be linked to flu-like virus

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x20 ... like-virus

Holland, MI —

An abrupt loss of heart function and reduced pumping because of an enlarged heart, otherwise known as dilated cardiomyopathy, took the life of Fennville basketball star Wes Leonard on Thursday night.

Cardiomyopathy, translated literally as “heart muscle disease” has three types: dilated, hypertrophic and restrictive.

In the case of dilated cardiomyopathy — which the Ottawa County medical examiner Friday ruled was the cause of Leonard’s death — the heart is enlarged, stretched and weak, so it doesn't pump normally, according to the American Heart Association.

Detroit-area Beaumont Hospital cardiologist Dr. David Haines said patients who have dilated cardiomyopathy typically have injury or microscopic scarring to their heart and are prone to heart failure but also life-threatening arrhythmias.

“Why people have this heart muscle injury is idiopathic — we just don’t know. The thinking is that most patients are patients who have had a viral infection and that infection has attacked the heart muscle,” said Haines, who is an expert in the field but doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of the Leonard case.

Fennville basketball coach Ryan Klingler told The Sentinel after a game last week that Leonard had been dealing with flu-like symptoms.

“It may in fact have been related to the flu,” Haines said. “It’s hard to say because there are so many viruses.”
Leonard, who was taken to Holland Hospital on Thursday night in cardiac arrest, is among a minority: Cardiac arrest among young adults is rare, only afflicting one out of every 100,000.