The condition that caused the

death of a Fayette County youth baseball player when he was struck by

a pitch Friday evening is rare.

And according to statistics

compiled by medical experts, it's even rarer to find survivors of commotio

cordis, which disrupts the normal rhythms of the heart after a blow to

the chest.

John Peter Ashmore's heart

was bruised by the baseball that struck him in the left front chest, said

Dr. Kris Sperry, the state's chief medical examiner who conducted the

autopsy Saturday morning.

Sperry said the cause of death

was ruled as a disturbance to Ashmore's heart rhythm due to a blow to

the chest. The result was that Ashmore suffered irreversible brain damage,

Sperry added.

According to the Minneapolis

Heart Institute Foundation, 128 cases of commotio cordis have been studied,

but only eight of the victims actually survived.

Dr. Barry Maron, who works

for the foundation and is recognized as an expert in the field, has said

in published accounts that commotio cordis requires that an object strike

the chest directly over the heart and precisely at a particular point

in the heart's rhythm.

Maron told the American Heart

Association that the most vulnerable children are those 12 or younger

who have narrow chest cages and/or underdeveloped chest muscles.

"Striking the chest at

any time is not advisable under any circumstances, even when the blow

is trivial," Maron told the AHA during a conference in 2002. "The

general public is largely unaware of the fact that striking the chest,

even lightly, can sometimes result in death. ... Any blow to the chest,

regardless of its intensity or velocity or force, is capable of producing

cardiac arrest."

The American Heart Association

says the most effective treatment for cardiac arrest is quick cardiopulmonary

resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation (delivering an electric shock to

the heart).

Of the eight persons who survived

commotio cordis, two were resuscitated by a defibrilator, according to

the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

An ambulance from the Fayette

County Department of Fire and Emergency Services was on the scene Friday

at the Kiwanis baseball fields five minutes and 24 seconds after being

notified of the call from the county's emergency 911 center, but no defibrilator

was used at the scene or in the ambulance trip to the hospital, according

to Fayette Emergency Medical Service Deputy Chief Allen McCullough.

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