My daughter died as I watched her swim

When Gloria Moss’ daughter, Laura, collapsed and died at a swimming gala seven years ago, there were no signs she had a heart problem.  Yet, like Laura, more than 400 young and seemingly healthy people die from sudden adult cardiac death syndrome (SADS) every year.  And an estimated 700,000 people in the UK suffer from arrhythmias or disturbances in the heart’s natural pumping rhythms.

“Laura would have been 20 this year if she’d lived.  There was no history in our family of heart problems,” says Gloria, 44, from Weymouth, Dorset, who works with the campaigning charity CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) to help raise awareness of the problem.  “All my kids are sporty but Laura was an extremely gifted swimmer who’d been picked to represent Great Britain,” adds Gloria.

On November 28 1997, Gloria took Laura to her school swimming gala, when tragedy struck.  “She was laughing and joking with her friends as I sat in the seats upstairs.  She got into the pool and the next minute I saw them dragging her out of the water.  I ran to the poolside and someone said she was fitting.  As soon as I saw her, I could see she was dying – she’d stopped breathing, so I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  All her friends were watching – it was horrific.  Laura was rushed to hospital by ambulance, but there was nothing they could do.  The consultant came out and said Laura had died.  I couldn’t believe it.  She was a happy, healthy child and the next minute she was gone.

Gloria and husband Alan somehow managed to get through the days that followed.  The autopsy didn’t find anything physically wrong with Laura that could have caused her death.  It was only in the weeks afterwards that Gloria got in touch with CRY and the charity paid for Gloria, Alan and their other children, Ryan, 17 and Kate, 15 to have cardiac tests at St George’s Hospital, London.  “They said the mist likely cause of Laura’s death was a disturbance in the heart’s normal rhythm, known as long QT syndrome,” says Gloria.  (In 2002 new genetic tests confirmed the presence of a gene in the family for long QT syndrome).  Long QT can be successfully treated with an implantable automatic defibrillator, which ‘shocks’ he heart into a normal rhythm.  Gloria’s biggest regret is that Laura wasn’t properly tested.  “there’s a chance that if a screening programme had existed it would have been picked up and she’d still be alive.  I’d like to see all children and young adults who are active in sports tested, so that other parents don’t experience what we went through – seeing their child die in front of them.”

Find out more about Long QT Syndrome