Preventing sudden cardiac death

IT is not uncommon to read about people who were apparently in their pink of health and who passed away suddenly in their sleep. This is almost always due to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), a condition in which the heart stops pumping effectively as a result of a life-threatening heart rhythm such as ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF).

Both sustained VT or VF are abnormal heart rhythms originating from lower heart chambers which prevent the transmission of electrical signals from the "generator" or pacemaker sited in the upper right heart chamber. These two abnormal heart rhythms result in ineffective pumping and a severe drop in blood pressure. The subsequent significant decrease in blood flow to the brain results in loss of unconsciousness. As a result, the person becomes unresponsive within seconds or minutes, has no normal breathing and the pulse is not palpable. If the condition is not treated immediately or does not revert spontaneously to a normal heart rhythm, the person can die and the event is then called sudden cardiac death (SCD).

Risk factors for sudden cardiac death