Key takeaways

  • Sudden cardiac arrest can strike without warning, even in young, healthy athletes like former professional quarterback Connor Shaw.
  • The Medtronic Aurora EV-ICD™ system helps protect against sudden cardiac arrest by treating dangerous heart rhythms, with a lead placed outside the heart and veins.
  • After surviving sudden cardiac arrest, Shaw is raising awareness about the importance of CPR, emergency preparedness, and lifesaving heart technology.
     

As a former professional quarterback and Division I college football legend, Connor Shaw is no stranger to adversity. But when the 34-year-old father of four collapsed while coaching his son’s flag football game in South Carolina, he faced an opponent he never saw coming: sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). 

SCA is caused by an electrical problem with the heart that causes a dangerously fast heart rhythm. This causes the heart to quiver rather than pump blood. When the heart stops pumping blood, oxygen cannot reach the body and brain. Every year in the United States, 436,0001 lives are claimed by SCA. That’s equal to one life every 90 seconds.2  Shaw knows just how quickly those statistics can become personal.

“I was down for five minutes before paramedics were able to jump-start my heart,” Shaw recalled. “Luckily, an off-duty firefighter administered CPR until paramedics arrived.”

Shaw, who played three seasons of professional football and won 27 games as the all-time winningest quarterback in his Division I college football program’s history, had no underlying heart conditions or personal history of heart disease when he collapsed on Sept. 17, 2025. While often associated with older adults or those with known heart disease, sudden cardiac arrest can strike even young, healthy individuals — including elite athletes.3

“It was shocking — when you spend most of your life as an athlete competing at the highest level, something like sudden cardiac arrest just isn’t in your playbook,” Shaw said.

Graphic illustration for the Connor Shaw patient story featuring blurred football action, a close-up of an athlete holding a football, and football playbook symbols. The layered composition is designed to represent the physical demands of football and the impact of sports-related injuries, supporting the story's discussion of Connor Shaw's health journey.

As part of his recovery, Shaw looked for answers around the cause of his cardiac arrest. Through multiple tests and evaluations, Shaw’s physicians confirmed he had no preexisting conditions that might have led to SCA. Still, Shaw took a proactive approach to guard against future SCA events after his doctor recommended he would be a good candidate for an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), a device implanted inside the chest that is capable of treating sudden cardiac arrest and abnormal heartbeats with a high-power shock.

How can an implantable defibrillator help after sudden cardiac arrest?

Within weeks of suffering his sudden cardiac arrest, Shaw received the Aurora EV-ICD™ (extravascular implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) system, a newer defibrillation technology designed to continuously monitor the heart and deliver lifesaving therapy if a dangerous heart rhythm occurs.

Unlike traditional implantable defibrillators that require the use of leads (thin, insulated wires that monitor the heart’s rhythm and carry treatment from the defibrillator when needed) threaded into the heart through blood vessels, the Aurora EV-ICD is uniquely designed with the lead placed outside the heart and veins to minimize the risk of certain downstream lead complications, while still providing the benefits of traditional defibrillator systems, including a similar size, shape, and longevity.

In addition to providing appropriate shock if needed to treat dangerously fast heart rhythms, the Aurora EV-ICD system can also deliver low-voltage pacing pulses to the heart called anti-tachycardia pacing to terminate potentially dangerous rhythms to restore the heart’s normal rhythm without a shock.4

For Shaw, the unique placement of the Aurora EV-ICD system — below the left armpit with the lead placed below the breastbone — was a critical factor in the device selection process with his care team.

“As an active individual without other health conditions, I felt that having a defibrillator system that allowed for more freedom of movement and less risk for lead-related complications down the road, was the best option for me,” said Shaw.

Supporting graphic for the Connor Shaw patient story featuring a football player in uniform alongside a Medtronic Aurora EV-ICD™ MRI SureScan™ device. The composition visually connects Shaw's football career with the cardiac technology that plays a role in managing his heart condition, reinforcing themes of health, resilience, and life beyond diagnosis.

The device, which acts as a protective insurance policy against future cardiac events, allows Shaw to get back to the activities he enjoyed before the SCA event, like playing with his kids and golfing with his friends — now with a renewed peace of mind.

What is Connor Shaw doing to raise sudden cardiac arrest awareness?

Today, a year after Shaw’s cardiac event at the flag football game and subsequent defibrillator implant, he’s using his experience and story to give back to communities in South Carolina to help others who may not realize SCA can happen without warning.

After surviving a sudden cardiac arrest thanks to bystanders who acted quickly, Shaw founded HRTHUDL to help more people recognize SCA and equip communities with emergency response resources that can save lives.

To learn more about sudden cardiac arrest and potential treatment options, visit Medtronic.com/sca.

In partnering with Shaw for this story, Medtronic provided a donation to HRTHUDL to support its mission of preparing communities to respond to sudden cardiac arrest.

Published Oct. 27, 2026

Important Safety Information

Risks associated with a defibrillation system include, but are not limited to, infection at the surgical site and/or sensitivity to the device material, failure to deliver therapy when it is needed, or receiving extra therapy when it is not needed.

If you are at risk of sudden cardiac arrest, always talk to your doctor about risks, diagnosis, and treatment information. For important safety information, visit Medtronic.com/evicd. This is one patient’s experience; results may vary.

  1. American Heart Association. CPR Facts and Stats. Heart.org. Accessed December 19, 2024.
  2. https://www.cardiosmart.org/topics/sudden-cardiac-arrest
  3. Lear A, Patel N, Mullen C, et al. Incidence of Sudden Cardiac Arrest and Death in Young Athletes and Military Members: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Athletic Training. 2022;57(5):431-443. https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-0748.20 
  4. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206485