Chest

Polar's RS800G3 training system ($500 list; polarusa.com) uses a wireless GPS unit and a heart rate chest strap to record performance data for a variety of outdoor sports from running and biking to paddling and cross-country skiing. The GPS unit worked flawlessly in a variety of situations, including a mountain bike ride under heavy tree cover. Battery life for the unit is about 10 hours. The only complaint was how easy it was to accidentally hit the main button during exercise, thus starting the timer for another lap. The RS800G3 also figures other elements into the workout analysis such as altitude, ascent, descent and pace.

Ruth Santiago was watching her favorite Spanish-language soap opera when two gunman burst into her two-story, brick rowhouse in East Baltimore Tuesday evening and fatally shot her and seriously wounded her live-in boyfriend, police and relatives said.Santiago, 40, died in the living room of the home, in the 3300 block of McElderry St. in the Ellwood Park-Monument neighborhood, shortly before 8 p.m. Her boyfriend, Rafael Abreu, 51, remains in serious condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital with gunshot wounds to the chest and leg, said police spokeswoman Agent Ragina L. Cooper.

Eric Sopracasa, a junior midfielder at the University of Massachusetts, is one of only two lacrosse players known to have died after being struck in the chest with a ball, a leading cardiac researcher said.Sopracasa, from Farmingville, N.Y., collapsed after being hit by a ball in practice Wednesday, said UMass officials. He was later pronounced dead at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. The cause of death is unknown, but the circumstances are similar to those of several young athletes who have died after being struck in the chest with a baseball or hockey puck.

BOSTON -- A twist of the wrist by two surgeons helped give a new look to the formerly sunken chest of 13-year-old Patrick Delaney in a demonstration of minimally invasive surgery last week.The Massachusetts General Hospital surgeons had inserted a bowed metal bar from one side of Patrick's chest to the other, through small incisions under each arm.Then, as if turning a crank, the doctors rotated the rod so that its arched shape pointed upward, pushing the boy's concave chest wall outward and giving it a normal contour.

THE TELEPHONE rang in Howard Golden's home Wednesday night, and the woman on the other end of the line, calling from Johns Hopkins Hospital, keeping a professional grip on her composure, said, "They may have a heart for you.""Oh, my God," said Golden.The words arrived at the end of 16 months of anticipation. Golden awaits a heart transplant. He is 57 years old and chief judge of the Orphans' Court for Baltimore City. He has suffered two heart attacks in the last 15 years and knows what it is to contemplate his own demise.

John Cabrer did not think. He just ran toward the noise. He saw a man running right at him. The man's face was purple and red and twisted with panic. "Call the police!" the man was screaming, over and over.In the chaos after a mass shooting in an Atlanta office building, Cabrer kept going. Security guards were running everywhere. He crossed a walkway and found himself at the emergency exit of All-Tech Investment Group. He looked inside a large room. He saw a man with a bullet wound in his cheek.

A foal can step in a hole.A foal can run into a fence.A foal can be struck by lightning.A foal can impale itself on a 4-foot piece of wood that rips into his chest and out the top of his body.What? Wait a minute. A foal's life can be treacherous, but a 4-foot piece of wood through the chest?That's what happened to Patience Game when he was 4 months old, romping in a field with his mother at Ross Valley Farm in Baltimore County.Now 3 years old, Patience Game will return to the state of his birth tomorrow as one of the likely 14 starters in the Preakness on Saturday at Pimlico Race Course.

A 38-year-old Annapolis man was stabbed in the chest early Monday morning, Annapolis police said.John Henry Davis was listed in critical condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.Annapolis police found Davis in the 1800 block of Bowman Court, in the northwest section of the city. He was bleeding from a chest wound inflicted by a woman, said Norman Johnson of the Annapolis Police Department.No arrests have been made.

Former Baltimore Colts quarterback John Unitas, who checked into University of Maryland Medical Center for a battery of heart tests Monday after complaining of chest pains, got a clean bill of health from the doctors and will return home today."

Death rates from lung cancer could be greatly reduced if smokers and ex-smokers routinely underwent CT scans of their lungs, doctors are reporting today.The scans use a new technique that is far more sensitive than conventional chest X-rays and can detect tumors when they are small enough to be cured.Now, routine chest X-rays and other screening tests for lung cancer are not recommended, even for smokers, because the tests cannot identify tumors early enough to save or even prolong patients' lives.

The words "perseverance" and "heart" are often used by wrestling coaches when discussing Centennial freshman Nathan Kraisser. Those words have a deeper meaning for his family, however. When Kraisser was 2, doctors told his parents their son had a hole in his heart and needed surgery. They took him to Children's Hospital in Washington, and doctors there cut into his chest, inserted white Dacron velour cloth into the hole and sewed his chest back together. "The day they told me he was going to have to have that surgery was the worst day of my life," said his mother, Kerri Kraisser.

It's easy to get frustrated with professional sports, especially when the massive sums of money at stake threaten to choke you with commercialism or drown you in hype. Sports can, sometimes, represent a total distortion of our values. They give us an excuse to obsess over the trivial and distract us from truly important issues of the day. But some days, sports are also a reminder of the wonders of human potential. They steal the breath right out of your chest and render you speechless.

A 6-year-old boy was wounded yesterday by a stray bullet during a shootout in Northeast Baltimore, police said. Police received a call about 5 p.m. about a shooting in the 3200 block of Lyndale Ave. at the corner of St. Cloud Avenue in Bel Air-Edison, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. The boy, who was one of several children playing in the area at the time of the shooting, was struck once, Moses said. The bullet passed through the upper right side of the boy's chest and did not strike any vital organs, Moses said.

After three days of deliberations, a Baltimore jury deadlocked yesterday in the murder trial of a man prosecutors accused of doing what the criminal justice system failed to do: punish the murderer of his little brother. After retired Circuit Judge Thomas J.S. Waxter declared a mistrial, Assistant State's Attorney James Francomano said that he would retry Darnell Edmonds, 25, in the killing of Kenneth Worrell, 28, of the 800 block of Bethune Road in Cherry Hill. Worrell was found dead in that block with multiple gunshot wounds to his upper body in December 2006.

One man was killed and another man injured by gunfire early yesterday morning near Clifton Park. Baltimore police said officers were called to the 3200 block of Lyndale Ave. about 2 a.m., where they found two men on the front porch of a home. One had been shot in the shoulder and one in the chest, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a spokeswoman for the police. Both were taken to local hospitals, and the man shot in the chest was pronounced dead at 2:30 a.m. Monroe said she could not release their identities last night because the slain man's family had not been notified.

Two men were shot last night, one of them fatally, while they sat on the front porch of a house in West Baltimore, police said. No arrest had been made, and police knew of no motive. The victims, both in their early 20s, were on the porch of a house in the 3100 block of Clifton Ave. about 8:30 p.m. when a man approached and opened fire with handgun, police said. One man was shot in the chest and the other in the groin, police said. Both were taken by Fire Department ambulances to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the man with the chest wound died a short time later.

A 23-year-old man was in critical condition yesterday after he was stabbed in the chest Tuesday night while walking at Charles and Baltimore streets in downtown Baltimore, police said. The stabbing occurred at 10:18 p.m., police said. A city police officer found the man, whose name police did not release, lying on the ground with wounds to his chest. Paramedics took the victim to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he underwent surgery. Police did not know of a motive for the attack and had no suspects.

A man was fatally stabbed about 5 p.m. yesterday during an apparent robbery attempt at a Catonsville gas station, according to Baltimore County police. The victim was stabbed multiple times in the chest at Carroll Fuel in the 5200 block of Baltimore National Pike, said Cpl. Patrick Wilhelm. The man was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead an hour later. Wilhelm said the victim was a customer at the store and that police were searching for the attacker, who reportedly was seen running away the gas station.

Two fans at Thursday night's Orioles game were taken to the hospital after one fell from the club-level deck at Camden Yards and landed on the other moments before the Orioles broke a tie to beat the Chicago White Sox in a 10-inning game. The Orioles called the incident "an unfortunate accident," but would not offer specific details, citing privacy laws. However, several sources with knowledge of the incident said an adult male was leaning too far over the railing on the first base side of the stadium just above the "Bank of America" advertisement.

Smokers who have long been harangued about the medical consequences of their habit have a new one to ponder: It might be harming their sleep. A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found that smokers are four times as likely as nonsmokers to report trouble sleeping and feeling rested the next day. Measurements of brain activity showed that they aren't experiencing as much deep sleep during the night, a possible side effect of...