Sudden Death Syndrome: Statistics on Sudden Death

 Sudden death Syndrome is a new study conducted by Framingham in 1948 and is called now: Framingham Heart Study. Half of the participants in this study are dead by now whose death were scrutinized to come with a satisfying conclusion. Framingham came with a definition of SDS where the person dies an hour after the symptoms appear! He stated that most of these death cases are due to SCD, known as Sudden Cardiac Death or heart failure. The study shows that men between 45 – 75 of age, who died of heart failure, of whom 60 % died suddenly without any warning! The study also confirmed that the reason of SCD is a sudden disturbance resulting from psychological instability of the patient, who can not be saved even if intensive care measures were taken because SCD is fatal.

According to BBC Online News, Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome is a disorder of the electrical system of the heart that can lead to the death of apparently healthy people without any warning.  

Death, as everyone knows, has a reason like suicide, accident or sickness…etc but to speak of a sudden death is a little bit weird, as this has never been known before! Recently, with the huge leap of technology, man managed to unveil the secrets of some illnesses which were considered mysterious like cancer or like contagious plagues. However, our new era is characterized as the golden stroke era where people die in their bus seats going to work, or while driving a car, or even while asleep! As we established earlier, sudden death is an unexpected death usually happens with one hour only, and those people with heart diseases have a 50% chance of undergoing a sudden death. Also, statistics said that a person might die suddenly even in the hospital where 10% die while hospitalized and 90% die outside the hospital!

Heart attacks or strokes come on top of the fatality list in the US which constitute 28% of the overall deaths and statistics had it that 700 Thousand persons died in 2001 in US only due to heart diseases. In addition to that, the fatality rate because of the heart failure is escalading worldwide recently, and the rate is much higher with men than women and despite the US spending on this issue thru research and study, still the rate is high.

Of course there is no need to mention here that smoking has served as a direct reason for hundreds of health problems and fatalities. Smoking raises the chance of having a sudden death where it is responsible of 25% of the international Heart Diseases. Also, stress or psychological pressure and age increase the chances of sudden heart failure where studies show that the most critical age is between 40 & 50, without forgetting another direct cause which is diabetes. 

Most of the doctors talk about a post-stroke cure as they don’t know yet the reason of this sudden death or the main reason of the heart disorderly behavior. However, doctors say that the best way to avoid it is to maintain maximum heart stability. The other treatment is thru surgery which again can not guarantee a positive result unless in few cases, but mainly, it’s advisable to reduce cholesterol and sugar intake for the patients.

To sum up, Sudden Death Syndrome is an unpredictable heart failure that can hit almost anyone. It’s a somewhat new disease that hasn’t been known before. It was studied and diagnosed 50 years ago, and the reasons are well-known to everyone such as smoking, junk food or fast food, new trends of leaving and neglecting regular exercises.