Was there something ‘I missed’: Kentucky cheerleader’s sudden death leaves dad agonized
By Farnoush Amiri
The sudden death of a 13-year-old Kentucky cheerleader on the day of a competition has shocked her community and left her father agonizing over whether he could have done more…Her father, Dan Schalck, said his daughter's hands felt cold and she complained about tingling in her limbs. The next thing he remembers is being in an emergency room while Lilliana's condition quickly deteriorated. Within less than two hours, she was dead…
Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist at Mayo Clinic whose clinical practice and research specializes in sudden deaths involving both athletes and nonathletes, describes this case as very unusual.
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Context: Farnoush from NBC reached out to Mayo to get an expert’s perspective about these types of incidents in general happening to young, otherwise healthy individuals. Dr. Ackerman is a specialist in sudden deaths among young athletes and nonathletes and studies genomics and a variety of heritable cardiovascular diseases predisposing to sudden death in the Mayo Clinic Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory.
Contact: Traci Klein
Tags: Dr. Michael Ackerman, NBC News, sudden death, Uncategorized