Many have seen on movies people dying from sudden cardiac arrest, colloquially known as sudden heart attack. Some may have even witnessed this happening in real life, noting the swiftness the person involved may pass away!
Sudden cardiac arrest due to sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS) is one of the most mysterious of all illness because there is no precursor to warn of an impending cardiac arrest and it comes almost randomly and unpredictably.
According to the ‘New Scientist‘ as reported in Times, about 1.3 death per 100,000 is attributable to SADS and it usually happens suddenly and without warning. The condition is linked to a genetic factor.
Researcher Adam Hill and his team at Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, as reported in New Scientist, have cracked some of the secrets of SADS by putting the heart reading into a supercomputer and discovered that SADS have distinctive readings pattern such as ‘ bump’ in the wave length reading that are different from others. The ECG readout could forewarn others of this genetically attributed heart disease by being treated with drugs or wearing a defibrillator planted to the chest.
The researchers breakthrough could help many with this genetic condition to have a better quality of life by preventing sudden cardiac arrest that may inevitably lead to sudden death.
