Britain’s Daily Mail reports that teen Tom Reid collapsed at North London nightclub Koko in late September during a party celebrating his enrollment in college. The 19-year-old student was rushed to a hospital and, despite efforts by medical personnel, died a few hours later.

Alisha Riseley, a friend of Reid’s who was at Koko with him that night, said the teen began complaining about not feeling well after the club filled up and the pair found themselves “pushed towards the speakers.”

“Tom said he felt like the bass was getting to his heart and we went to stand at the back,” Riseley told the Daily Mail.

Even after moving, Reid told her, “My heart feels funny, I think the bass is affecting me. Oh God, I feel weird. My heart is beating so fast.”

Riseley took Reid to see a medic at the club around 2 a.m., but he declined further medical attention at a hospital, saying he just wanted to go home and get some rest. Before he could do so however, he collapsed and paramedics were called. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital just over an hour later.

A coroner ruled that Reid’s death occurred from natural causes, citing sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), a disorder of the heart’s electrical system also known as long QT syndrome, as the underlying factor.

While it’s not certain that the bass in the club was what triggered Reid’s cardiac arrest, one medical expert told ABC News it’s possible.

“Any time someone in a setting of excitement has a sudden cardiac arrest, especially at a young age with a seemingly normal heart, you have to consider [an inherited condition] such as long QT,” Dr. Richard Page of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health told ABC. “One of the genetic variants is especially predisposed to having an arrhythmia when exposed to loud sound.”

Other experts, however, are a little more skeptical.

“I don’t think the bass is the problem per se, just the loud noise,” University of South Florida’s Dr. Anne B. Curtis, chief of cardiovascular disease, said.

Mary Jo Gordon, executive director of the Cardiac Arrhythmias Research and Education Foundation, Inc., who suffers from long QT along with several of her siblings, was also doubtful the music caused Reid’s death.

“My sister’s cardiac arrest was caused by a minor accident,” Gordon said and urged people to get tested by ECG or EKG for the illness, adding “If they find it, it’s treatable.”

Dr. Page told ABC parents shouldn’t be alarmed that their kids are going to start dropping dead at clubs and concerts, but the tragedy does provide a couple of opportunities.

“I don’t think this is a call for action for not standing near a loud speaker,” he explained. “But I do think that any time a young person dies it is an opportunity to remind all of us that public places should have AEDs, and we should all know CPR.

“I feel that people are more at risk for damage to their ears rather than heart arrhythmias from loud music.”