Damar Hamlin is awake and shows 'substantial improvement,' physicians say

Updated January 5, 2023 at 2:39 PM ET

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who suffered a cardiac arrest during a Monday game, is awake and has shown "substantial" improvement in the past 24 hours, according to his physicians.

Physicians from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where the 24-year-old is being treated, said at a Thursday news conference that Hamlin had woken up and appears to have his neurological function intact.

"We had significant concern about him after the injury and after the event that happened on the field, but he has made substantial improvement," UCMC physician Timothy Pritts said.

Hamlin is unable to speak because of his breathing tube but has been able to communicate through writing, the physicians said. He is also able to move his hands, feet and head.

"He expressed surprise that he had not been with the world for a couple days and we talked about the support from the team and really the world for him and his family at the time," UCMC physician William Knight IV said.

Hamlin continues to be critically ill and undergo intensive care in the ICU, but Knight called the past 24 hours a "good turning point."

Physicians said the next steps will be to get Hamlin out of the ICU and home to his family. They said the best scenario would have his condition back to what it was before the tackle.

After Hamlin's heart stopped beating following what seemed like a routine tackle, first responders resuscitated him by performing CPR and using a defibrillator.

Pritts and Knight called the emergency medical response life-saving, describing the injury as "rare" and "not a run-of-the-mill injury."

Hamlin's father, Mario Hamlin, addressed the Buffalo Bills team on a Zoom call Wednesday to let everyone that Hamlin was making progress, ESPN reported.

The Bills-Bengals game was postponed with six minutes left in the first quarter and will not be resumed this week. The NFL has not yet decided whether to reschedule the match-up at a later date.

Pritts said the first question Hamlin asked when he woke Thursday was, "Did we win?" Physicians told him, "You won at the game of life."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

• Goalie Nicole Hensley stars in OT as league-leading Minnesota tops New York in a shootout, 4-3
• Netflix is dreaming of a glitch-free Christmas with 2 major NFL games set
• Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, baseball’s stolen base king, has died at 65
• Connor Hellebuyck nets shutout as Jets rout Wild 5-0