Danish international Christian Eriksen will return to the Premier League on Saturday, just eight months after he collapsed on the pitch at football's European Championship. The 30-year-old will be the first top-flight player fitted with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD), which can reset the heart after a cardiac arrest.
"I was gone from this world for five minutes," Eriksen told the BBC in an interview this month. Denmark were playing Finland in their opening game of the Euros last summer when one of the world's best midfielders suddenly collapsed. He was given CPR, and an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) was used to reset his heart so it could pump blood properly again.
At the time it was suggested Eriksen's professional career could be over. But after an operation to have an ICD fitted, he will now make his debut for his new club Brentford, against Newcastle, and is targeting a return to international football at the World Cup finals later this year.
A cardiac arrest is subtly different from a heart attack, and occurs when blood stops pumping around the body as it should. That can happen for a number of different reasons - when the electrical impulses that regulate heartbeats don't function properly, or when the walls to the heart become inflamed or damaged. In young people, the underlying cause can either be genetic or acquired in some way - after an infection or an allergic reaction to a medication, for example.
Heart problems affecting young professional athletes are unusual but not unheard of. Eriksen's collapse came nine years after Fabrice Muamba's near-fatal injury at Tottenham and 19 years after Marc-Vivien Foe tragically lost his life in Lyon. But outside professional sport, a sudden cardiac arrest kills 12 people a week under the age of 35 in the UK, according to Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), one of the highest causes of death in that age group after suicide and accidents.
The charity's chief executive Dr Steve Cox says: "80% of deaths in young people occur with no previous symptoms whatsoever. The vast majority of cardiac arrests happen outside of sport, when people are asleep or at rest." Eriksen has said there was no history of a heart condition like this in his family and, like other top-flight footballers, he was tested regularly throughout his career.
