Fact or fiction? These claims are speculative at best.
Bristol:
I first became aware of the concept of the “death touch” as a teenager – after watching Uma Thurman’s The Bride finally kill Bill using the five-point palm-exploding heart technique.
Recently, news emerged that political prisoner Alexei Navalny’s death may have been caused by a powerful blow to the chest – apparently a KGB signature.
Fact or fiction? These claims are speculative at best. But it is possible for the heart to stop beating after trauma, through interruptions at specific points in the “lub-dub” beating cycle. This phenomenon is called commotio cordis—literally “thrilling of the heart.”
The area of the body of interest here is the precordium, the area of the chest wall located directly above the heart. This area is on the left side of most of us, with the apex pointing toward the left nipple. In this area, you can feel your heartbeat. As many of us have experienced, this is best when it’s pounding hard after exercise or exertion.
The precordium is a shield made up of the ribs and their muscles that are responsible for the expansion and contraction of our chests. Further swaddling is provided by the pericardium, a membranous sac sandwiched by a cuff of shock-absorbing fat and fluid.
You can see that the heart is well protected, but may still be vulnerable. In fact, cardiac concussion is more common in young athletes and is caused by a blunt impact with a hard object like a baseball or ice hockey puck. Recently, NFL player Damar Hamlin suffered a panic attack after a bad tackle, but luckily, he was revived.
The good news for these athletes is that the chances of an impact causing upset are slim. First, the effect must occur exclusively in the precordium. Second, it must have enough energy to deliver sufficient mechanical force to the heart’s pumping muscles.
Third, it must occur in a very specific part of the heart’s electrical rhythm. On the trace of the cardiac cycle (electrocardiogram, or electrocardiogram), this is the area called the T wave upshoot. This only accounts for about 1% of the entire cardiac cycle, so the likelihood (depending on time) is about 1 in 100.
This makes heartbeats rare, but still significant. Disruption of the cardiac cycle here can lead to severe, potentially fatal, rhythm disturbances. This is called ventricular fibrillation. The medical team must act quickly to restore a normal heart rhythm using chest compressions, epinephrine, and defibrillator resuscitation.
How to Save a Life Although a blow can stop the heart, in some cases it can also have the opposite effect.
Historically, part of the algorithm for treating cardiac arrest patients has been to start by tapping the precordium with the bottom of a clenched fist. This is called a precordial punch and is used in resuscitation scenes on medical series like Grey’s Anatomy, although mostly for dramatic effect. In some cases, it has been found to restore normal heart rhythm, thereby restoring function.
The presumed reason why precordial percussion may work is by converting mechanical forces into tiny electrical currents that return the heart rhythm to normal. However, it is this same mechanism that can also cause heart palpitations. This risks making the problem worse.
Therefore, the thumping sound in the precordium is no longer elegant. Some studies have found no benefit at all from its use. As a result, it has been removed from the UK’s advanced life support guidelines.
Therefore, although the heart is shielded by multiple layers of bone, muscle, and membranes, it is still a fragile entity. You can be trained to hit the precordium in the right places with enough force. But being able to hit the heart at the precise time needed to induce heart palpitations makes the reality of a fatal touch much less likely.
Maybe being one of the 0.00008% of people with dextrocardia, a condition in which the heart is secretly located on the right side of the body, might work to your advantage.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
