Most runners leave hospitals

With one tragic exception, those injured in Sunday's Chicago Marathon began recovering Monday, local hospitals reported.

A Chicago Fire Department spokesman said 312 people had been treated for heat related ailments.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital got 54 of those and by Monday morning all but 12 had been released. By the late afternoon, five remained and were expected to stay overnight.

University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago saw 30 marathoners and two remained Monday afternoon.

Mt. Sinai Hospital received two and University of Chicago Hospital received one, who remained there in serious condition Monday. Mt. Sinai officials could not say if their runners were still hospitalized.

In Midland, Mich., the family of police officer Chad Schieber, 35, was preparing for his funeral, brother Ty Schieber said.

Schieber was the runner who collapsed and died along the course Sunday.

The Cook County medical examiner's office said Monday Schieber's cause of death was a mitral valve prolapse.

The condition is one in which a heart valve doesn't close completely and can sometimes allow blood to flow backward, said Kousik Krishnan, a heart specialist at Rush University Medical Center.

Krishnan, who ran Sunday's marathon himself, said as many as 10 percent of the population has the condition but it usually does not manifest itself with sudden death. He said it's premature to say the heat or other factors did not contribute to Schieber's death.

"There's a very, very loose connection to mitral valve prolapse and sudden death," Krishnan said.

If dehydration was present, that could have led to an irregular heart beat that contributed to his death, but that might not show up on an autopsy, Krishnan said.