Sudden death in the young: what do we know about it and how to prevent?

摘要

Sudden death (SD) of children and adults ages 1 to 40 years has received increasing attention over the past decades. In this report, we provide an overview of this problem, consider several mass screening strategies to prevent these events, and critically appraise these strategies in light of the well known Wilson and Jungner criteria (Table I).1 Finally, we present an alternative approach: optimal assessment of first-degree relatives of newly diagnosed patients with an inherited cardiac disease and young SD victims to identify those relatives at risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD).