Youth Baseball Heart Protection
Heart protection, a must for saving lives in youth baseball!
This page is dedicated to raising awareness for the need of heart protection in youth baseball. Every year children die in baseball related injuries, and it's the responsibility of the parents and coaches to see to it that everything is being done to prevent this. Using heart protection to prevent commotio cordis is one step to doing this.
There is growing awareness for the need for heart protection in youth baseball. In 1989, a National Amateur Baseball Catastrophic Surveillance Program was initiated. Its’ final report includes data from 18 year (1989 to 2006) and 13 organizations. The result of this report was that there were 39 fatalities, 26 disability injuries, and 30 serious injuries with complete recovery. While these numbers are small compared to the total of 82,687,876 amateur baseball players during this time, they are still avoidable. One of the causes of death is commotio cordis. Impact to the chest is transmitted to the heart muscle, and depending on when in the heart cycle the impact hits, it may affect the heart's electrical activity, causing an arrhythmia, and often death. This effect is called commotio cordis.
All Sports Armour has come out with an excellent product called EvoShirt that protects both the heart and ribs! It uses a revolutionary technology called evoSHIELD, which is a lightweight 5-layer composite material that hardens when exposed to air, allowing it to be easily custom-fitted to the player making it comfortable to wear. As we all know, comfort is key, because no matter how well something protects, if it's not comfortable you'll have a very hard time getting a child to wear it!
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The shirt itself is moisture wicking to keep you dry, and has 4-way stretch for excellent comfort. There are 3 pockets, one in front and two in the back, into which the shields are placed. To wash the shirt, simply take out the shields. Also, additional shirts without the shields can be purchased so that you don't have to wash every day.
The EvoShirt is the best product we've seen for heart protection for baseball players. It can even help the child gain confidence since he'll be less worried about getting hurt. So we encourage you to add this product to your list of "must haves" for playing youth baseball!
