Boy in coma after line drive to chest

WAYNE, N.J. – There was no score in the fourth inning when 12-year-old Steven Domalewski took the mound on Tuesday night to try to help send his team to the playoffs.

The batter hit a line drive to Steven’s chest, knocking him down and causing his heart to stop for a few minutes as he lapsed into a coma, said Eddie Meyer, 49, the father of one of Steven’s teammates.

Steven’s father, a coach on his baseball team, Tomascovic’s Challengers, a Police Athletic League team, was among those who rushed to the boy’s side.

Steven, a seventh grader at Anthony Wayne Middle School in Wayne, N.J., remained in intensive care on Friday at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson. Doctors were keeping Steven in a coma and planned to bring him out of it next week. Doctors called his chances of survival good.

Dr. Robert Faillace, chairman of cardiovascular services at St. Joseph’s, said at a news briefing on Friday that Steven suffered from commotio cordis, a rare but often fatal disruption of the heart’s electrical system caused by a sharp impact to the chest at a precise interval between heartbeats.

Source: St. Petersburg Times