What Is Sudden Cardiac Death?

If you can still remember, three young high profile professional athletes: Reggie Lewis (basketball player), Darryl Kile (baseball pitcher), and Marc Vivien Foe (football player) all died of sudden cardiac death or sudden death due to a fatal heart rhythm called ventricular fibrillation.

Sudden cardiac death is sudden and unexpected with death occurring within minutes after collapse. It is more common to older folks with serious heart ailments although it sometimes does happen to those young and healthy people with no outward sign of heart disease.

It is not the same as heart attack but a heart attack may actually cause sudden cardiac death either during the first few hours of the heart attack or many years after the attack. To differentiate the two, one can think of sudden cardiac death as an electrical malfunction and heart attack as one that is caused by blocked arteries (plumbing malfunction). To be more precise, sudden cardiac death arises when millions of “short-circuits” occur in the heart, causing the heart pump to fail and cease to deliver life-sustaining blood, oxygen and nutrients. The person thus becomes unconscious. Death can occur just within minutes if the situation is not remedies.

The only chance of survival for a victim of sudden cardiac death is to “re-start” his or her heart by an electrical shock from a machine known as a defibrillator. There are few types of defibrillators, namely manual external defibrillators (MED), automatic external defibrillators (AED), and implantable defibrillators (ICD).

Only trained personnel such as doctors, nurses, or paramedics can operate MED whereas AED can be operated by lay persons with minimal training. These machines automatically recognized heart rhythms that are treatable by electrical shock, and prompt the user to press the “shock” button. The machines are easy to operate and have been used successfully in airports, casinos and other public places to resuscitate victims of cardiac arrest.

ICD is implanted into a person’s body by surgery. It is fully automatic, and it can recognize and treat ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation without any external intervention, usually even before the person has lost consciousness.

In order to prevent sudden cardiac death, it is necessary to take a complete medical history, including a detailed family history of any cardiovascular disease, and carry out a thorough physical examination. If any symptom of heart disease, such as palpitations, fainting spells, chest pain, or breathlessness on physical exertion, is evident, and then further investigation that includes an electrocardiogram and echocardiogram is compulsory.

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