The epidemiology of tachyfibrillation in sudden death

Abstract

Although death occurs suddenly in coronary heart disease, it is associated with a prior history of cardiac disease in 85% and with prodromal symptoms in 73.8% of the patients resuscitated from cardiac arrest outside the hospital. Sudden death was the first expression of coronary heart disease in 3.6% of the patient population. The fact that out-of-hospital sudden death is usually secondary to myocardial infarction and ischemia is supported by this clinical study and is suggested by other clinical and pathological studies of individuals dying suddenly.