CLIFTON PARK, NY (NEWS10) —After a Clifton Park teen collapsed and died while playing the sport he loved, his family is now sharing his story hoping to raise awareness about a serious heart condition that often goes undetected.
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Last Friday, 19-year-old Joahkim Dennis was doing what he loved the most: playing basketball at Clifton Commons. While playing, he suddenly collapsed, went into cardiac arrest and died. He had a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy also known as HCM. NEWS10’s Tyanna Xavier spoke with Dr. Mark Tallman, a cardiologist at Albany Medical Center who helped explain what it is.
“When you have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, there’s a thickening in the septum. When the heart squeezes, two things happen. The mitral valve is kind of drawn into the outflow pathway of the blood and the thickening of the muscle itself, it actually causes narrowing there also. So the blood really has to get forced out of the heart,” said Tallman.
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Tallman said when you have HCM, a lot of physical activity can be dangerous for you.
“The number one cause of sudden death in young, athletic people is actually that disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And so, patients may not know they have it, which puts them obviously at risk,” said Tallman.
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Joahkim was diagnosed 6 months ago. His mother Tawana Dennis was the one who noticed something was off with his breathing when he ran upstairs to grab something one day…