The Most Common Cause of Sudden Cardiac Death in Athletes: Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy-Associated Genes and Mutations

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SuddenCardiac Death (SCD) is natural and unexpected death from cardiac causes, heralded by abrupt loss of consciousness within 1hour of the onset of an acute change in cardiovascular status. It is difficult to estimate the incidence of SCD but cardiovascular diseases are responsible for approximately 17 million deaths every year in the world, approximately 25% of which are SCD. Several factors like age, race, gender and heredity influence the incidence of SCD. The risk of SCD is higher in men than in women and it increases with age due to the higher prevalence of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) in older age. Cardiac diseases associated with SCD differ in young vs. older individuals. In the young, there is a predominance of channelopathies and cardiomyopathies, myocarditis and substance abuse, while in older populations, chronic degenerative diseases predominate.

Causes of SCD are numerous: atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, nonatherosclerotic coronary abnormalities, ventricular hypertrophy of myocardium including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, myocardial diseases and heart failure, congenital heart diseases and diseases of cardiac valves, electrophysiological abnormalities of cardiac conduction system (eg: Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome, Brugada Syndrome, long QT interval syndromes) and miscellaneous causes including extreme physical activity, blunt chest trauma(commotio cordis) and aortic dissection.