Brevard County nonprofit helps save lives with heart screenings

Good News Notes:

 The Brevard County nonprofit organization Who We Play For is doing its part one heart screening at a time, helping save lives like that of now 15-year-old Gavin Idone of Cocoa Beach.

Lena Idone described the moment last year when her teenage son, a health surfer, was diagnosed with a heart condition.

“It can lead to sudden cardiac arrest, we’ve learned. So, yeah, very scary,” Lena Idone said.

She said she and her son were about to head home from a surf contest in Satellite Beach when they decided to get him screened.

“We were just walking through the parking lot where there’s a bunch of tents,” Lena Idone said. “A girlfriend and a surf team mom stopped and said, ‘Who We Play For is doing heart screenings, we should get the team screened.’”

That’s when Lena Idone said she signed up her son for an electrocardiogram test, also known as an ECG or EKG, which helps detect any cardiac abnormalities.

Lena Idone said her son never showed any symptoms and was a healthy boy. But at 14 years old, the test revealed Gavin Idone was suffering from Wolff-Parkinson White syndrome, a condition that causes a rapid heartbeat between the upper and lower chambers of the heart.

“It can be found at any age but when we do screening EKGs it is one of the cardiovascular conditions in the teenage group that can predispose to sudden cardiac arrest,” said Dr. Gul Dadlani, chief of pediatric cardiology at Nemours Children’s Hospital.”

View the whole story here: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/02/16/brevard-county-nonprofit-helps-save-lives-with-heart-screenings/

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