A young 19-year-old basketball player was taken to Necker hospital in critical condition after suffering a cardiac arrest during a basketball tournament.
The accident occurred on Saturday around noon when the teenager, licensed at the Saint-Germain club, had just finished her second match in the Pierre-de-Coubertin gymnasium, in Bezons (Val-d'Oise).
She climbed onto the balcony overlooking the field to watch the rest of the competition before suddenly collapsing in front of her comrades.
“She was chatting quietly with her friends,” confides the president of Usob.
“Suddenly, she fell.
A young man came to pick me up and I went up.
One of the tournament organizers was already there.
She was breathing hard, but a little.
But little by little, it stopped.
I no longer had a pulse.
We began the cardiac massages, guided remotely by the firefighters and the Samu, until help arrived.
» It was a club coach and tournament organizer who for many minutes tried to get the victim's heart to restart.
Resuscitated on site
A medical team from Necker took care of the victim by implementing an Ecmo procedure.
This is a circulatory assistance technique when the heart is almost no longer functioning and the patient is threatened with imminent death.
This is then connected to a machine which ensures all or part of the blood circulation in place of his failing heart.
The blood is reoxygenated before being reinjected by a pump into the arterial circulation.
The basketball player was then transported in absolute emergency to Necker hospital.
According to our information, she is still hospitalized there in serious condition this Monday.
The Samu also dispatched a medical-psychological unit to the scene to take care of people psychologically shocked by the incident.
In addition to the Val-d'Oise firefighters, a team from the Red Cross was also mobilized to take care of 24 people.
The intervention lasted 5 hours.
The accident occurred during a regional 3 x 3 basketball tournament, organized by the Val-d'Oise departmental committee and the Sports Event association.
He was a qualifier for the regional tournament.