title: [Sudden cardiac death: can individual risk be predicted?].
abstract: Only 30-40% of all victims of sudden cardiac death could so far be classified as risk patients during their lifetime. Risk factors for sudden death have little predictive value in an asymptomatic population: for example, the typical risk profile for the presence of coronary heart disease and changes in the surface-ECG at rest and especially in the surface-ECG under stress. Usually, the victims of sudden cardiac death among top performance athletes have been suffering from a heart disease of which they knew nothing beforehand: below 40 years of age, mostly from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; beyond 40, predominantly from coronary heart disease. Among the heart diseases, sudden cardiac death is the cause of death most often in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, in dilatative cardiomyopathy and in certain types of coronary heart disease. Notwithstanding the employment of fully update cardiological diagnostics the risk patients cannot be identified with reliable precision among those suffering from these diseases. It is only clinically manifest persistent ventricular tachycardia or successful reanimation in case of ventricular fibrillation that will definitely pinpoint the patient as being at risk of sudden cardiac death also in the future.
authors.affiliation: II. Medizinische Klinik, Allgemeinen Krankenhauses St. Georg, Hamburg.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Meinertz
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hofmann
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zehender
mesh_terms: D002311:Cardiomyopathy, Dilated / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality; D002312:Cardiomyopathy, Hypertrophic / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality; D003645:Death, Sudden / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*; D006323:Heart Arrest / Q000209:etiology* / Q000401:mortality; D006330:Heart Defects, Congenital / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality; D006801:Humans; D012307:Risk Factors; D013177:Sports
vernacular_title: Der plötzliche Herztod: Lässt sich die individuelle Gefährdung vorhersagen?