Doug McWhorter

Doug McWhorter, a 19-year-old college student, was diagnosed with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) on May 1, 2004. "It was the worst day of my life," recalls Doug. "It was my junior year in high school and Coach had mandated that we get our yearly physical at the TOPS (Team of Physicians for Students) event." Doug remembers being annoyed because although he woke up early that day to stand in line, the line was already out the door by the time he arrived and he had a baseball game that afternoon. "I remember thinking it's a free physical, how good can it be"? says Doug. "When my ECG came back abnormal, they had me stand in line for an echo test. I tried to talk the staff into clearing me to play without the ultrasound; fortunately, they refused."

Dr. William J. Rappoport of the Arizona Heart Institute in Phoenix was the cardiologist who evaluated Doug that day. "Doug's ECG was grossly abnormal. We did an echo on site and found that he had Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy," Rappoport explains. "He had no murmur and no positive features in his family history so a normal physical would have missed it."

Given that HCM is a genetic disorder, and the most common cause of sudden cardiac arrest in people under 30¹, Doug's entire family was screened after his diagnosis. "It was a good thing because both his father and brother were also diagnosed with HCM and all had rhythm problems that could have caused sudden death," says Rappoport.

Gene McWhorter, Doug's father and silent carrier of the gene that causes HCM, still tears up when he talks about that fateful day when Doug was diagnosed with HCM. "We just assume all of our youth are healthy," says Gene. "Doug had had a physical every year for 17 years, but this was the first time anyone had done an ECG. It saved his life, his younger brother's life and my life."

In the almost two years since he and his sons were diagnosed with HCM and fitted with pacemakers and defibrillators, Gene says hardly a week goes by that he doesn't hear of a student athlete who has died from HCM. Gene believes the real tragedy is that these student athletes do not have to die. "We don't have control over our own genetics, but we do have the technology available to detect and diagnose HCM; we don't have to be at risk," declares Gene.

As for Doug, he says the TOPS physical was the best physical he has ever had. "As it turns out, the free physical I was so skeptical of ended up being the one I value most," he explains. Doug has not let HCM stop him from leading a normal life either. "When I found out I had heart disease, it didn't take long for me to decide that I wasn't going to let it stop my life. I was going to strive to turn what could be perceived as a weakness, into a strength," says Doug. "I go to college. I walk a mile to class everyday. And I play recreational sports everyday. It's nice to know I can do all that and not fall over and possibly die."