Great Hank Gathers article

[wiscodevil]

On the 20th anniversary of his death:

http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com/2010/03/02/twenty-years-after-hank-gathers-stirs-memories-for-his-family/

[SupaDave]

On the 20th anniversary of his death:

http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com/2010/03/02/twenty-years-after-hank-gathers-stirs-memories-for-his-family/

Great article. This gives me the chills. I will never ever forget watching Bo Kimble shoot those left handed free throws.

[Hancock 4 Duke]

That's weird, I was just reading that story in one of Dickie V's books last night. I thought it was very respectful for him to do that and it seemed like the two couldn't be separated! When one transfered, the other did as well. Great article.

[davekay1971]

For the life of me, I'll never understand how hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was missed in Gathers.

When a young athlete collapses in competition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one of the first things you think of. It's certainly not the only thing that can cause a collapse, but it's the most potentially life threatening. You can test for and diagnose it with a simple echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) that takes about 15 minutes to do. The echo shows the thickening of the heart muscle clearly, and you can easily measure the pressure gradient across the left ventricular outflow tract (the passage where the oxygenated blood leaves the heart to go out to the body). Finding a thickening of the heart muscle (the hypertrophy) and a significantly elevated pressure gradient means an increased chance of ventricular dysrhythmias, which are potentially life threatening...and what killed Gathers. You can better determine the risk of life threatening events by doing a treadmill stress echo, where you get the baseline images, then run the athlete on the treadmill to maximum level of exertion on EKG monitoring, then repeat echo images and pressure measurements with the heart at peak exertion. In an athlete with a diagnosed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and a history of passing out, that's it, the career in high level athletics is done.

Does anyone know if an echocardiogram was not done on Gathers? I can't imagine it wouldn't have been...the technology was readily available and it's use in that clinical setting well described. But if it was done, how could his condition not have been known?

The prescription of a beta blocker is appropriate for HOCM, but not sufficient protection in a person with HOCM and a syncopal event to allow them to continue high intensity atheletics.

It's a tragedy, and seems like it should have been preventable.

[ReformedAggie]

It was 20 years ago. We didn't know then what we know now about sport medicine (she said donning her Captain Obvious cape). Just recently sports have been paying the kind of attention to football concussions that have debilitated many players but were treated as something you took the afternoon off for.

If a guy played like he did, people sometimes didn't look too closely for
things that might keep him out of a game imo.
He was amazing.

[davekay1971]

It was 20 years ago. We didn't know then what we know now about sport medicine (she said donning her Captain Obvious cape). Just recently sports have been paying the kind of attention to football concussions that have debilitated many players but were treated as something you took the afternoon off for.

If a guy played like he did, people sometimes didn't look too closely for
things that might keep him out of a game imo.
He was amazing.

Not actually true about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, however. While the science and understanding regarding long term effects of concussions has been developing over the last decade or so, we (cardiologists, at least) knew perfectly well 20 years ago that (1) syncope in a young athlete was an alarming event, (2) it implied a strong possibility of ventricular dysrhythmias, and (3) evaluation for HOCM had to be done. An excellent article in the prominent cardiology journal, Circulation, in 1980 reviewed and reinforced the concern of HOCM in athletes and it's relationship to sudden cardiac death.

So, while it's true that the lay public learned a lot more about the possibility of cardiac related death in young athletes after Hank Gathers and Reggie Lewis, but by the time Gathers had his first syncopal even at the free throw line, the implications and appropriate work-up of a syncopal event in an athlete were well known to medical professionals. And if his workup or management was influenced in any way by the desire to not "look too closely for things that might keep him out of a game", we go from a simple medical error of omission to a crime reckless endangerment...something I would not imply without specific evidence to back it up!

[burnspbesq]

I had the privilege of attending LMU's NCAA first and second round games that year. The term "unreal" has been devalued by overuse, but those games really were.

[tbyers11]

There is an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary called Guru of Go (http://30for30.espn.com/film/gurus-of-go.html) about Paul Westhead and that 1990 LMU team with Gathers and Kimble.

It premieres April 3rd.

[Neals384]

Thanks, dbb. That brought tears to me eyes.

[Huh?]

Wow, what a great article. I was about 9 when he died so I never realized how good he really was. 33 ppg and 14 rpg?? That's incredible.

[Edouble]

Not gonna start a new thread, but I would like to remember the great Eric "Hank (the Bank)" Gathers, today, on the 30th anniversary of his death.

Thanks for the memories, and for some damn exciting basketball, Hank!