Boy taken to hospital after playing computer games for 40 hours

A Russian teenager named as Artyom, 15, was taken to hospital after spending more than 40 hours playing computer games.

Artyom’s parents went to their relatives for a wedding party during a recent weekend. Artyom was left home alone. He immediately found the computer wires, which his father had hidden from him: the man was aware of his son’s gaming addiction. Artyom was so engaged in gaming that he did not even notice that he had been playing for 40 hours.
When the parents came back they found their pale-faced son sitting in front of the monitor.

“Artyom did not react to anything. He was just staring at the screen. At first we thought that he was just pretending, however when our son’s face started to turn blue we called an ambulance,” Artyom’s mother said.

When the doctors came they noticed immediately that the child was completely inadequate.

“Artyom was answering our questions inappropriately and his body temperature and blood pressure were at a very low level. He was actually about to faint,” a doctor said.

Nearly all of Artyom’s friends were avid gamers, so the teen boy, who did not have his own computer, was very envious. However, when the parents bought him a computer for his 15th birthday they did not even think that it could do so much harm to their child.

A teenager died in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg after 12 hours of playing computer games. The boy died from stroke after he had spent a half of his day playing games in a computer club. Doctors were taking lifesaving efforts for several days, but could not save the boy. The autopsy showed that the brain of a young gamer was totally destroyed.

According to the information from the press service of the city's healthcare administration, the tragedy occurred last week. The boy stayed in the game club longer than safety regulations allowed. When the boy returned home, he showed quite inadequate behavior, which made his mother call an ambulance. The boy was hospitalized, stayed in the reanimation department for seven weeks and died. Doctors concluded that computer games launched the development of the brain pathology, which the boy was suffering from, having thus provoked stroke.

Doctors of the city hospital say that they start receiving information about computer game addiction developing among teenagers on a regular basis. According to sociological research, up to 80 percent of schoolchildren of 12-13 years of age suffer from addiction to computers in Russia. Children may spend whole days sitting in front of computers without food, water and rest.