A leading sports cardiologist has said that Danish footballer Christian Eriksen may never be able to play professional football again following his cardiac arrest during a LIVE match between Demark and Finland on Saturday night.
The video of Eriksen collapsing on the field during the match had stunned football fans. The footballer, who also plays for Inter Milan football club, had to be resuscitated before being taken to hospital.
Sanjay Sharma, a professor of sports cardiology at St George’s University in London, said that ‘Clearly something went terribly wrong.’ “But they managed to get him back, the question is what happened? And why did it happen? This guy had normal tests all the way up to 2019 so how do you explain this cardiac arrest?” Sky News quoted Sharma as saying.
Sharma had previously worked with Eriksen during his stint with English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur.
Sharma said that Eriksen’s cardiac arrest could be linked to an unidentified health condition or the high temperature. He, however, said that the footballer being awake in the hospital was ‘a very good sign.’
Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba had experienced a similar collapse after suffering a cardiac arrest during a match against Tottenham Hotspur in March 2012. Muamba was forced to retire from professional football five months later on medical advice.
One of his doctors, Sam Mohiddin, told the BBC that doctors can only make assumptions at the moment about whether Denmark midfield Eriksen may return to his career. He said, “It sounds like he has had successful CPR and he has regained normal cardiac rhythm because of defibrillation but there are other things that will have to be worked through.”
Mohidin added, “The cardiac arrest is a moment of extreme peril. If you don’t get someone out of cardiac arrest things are over. You will not survive. The ongoing risk to an individual to an extent depends on the precise cause of that cardiac arrest.”
