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Multicenter Study
. 2014 Apr;7(2):212-7.
doi: 10.1161/CIRCEP.113.001034. Epub 2014 Mar 7.

Public health burden of sudden cardiac death in the United States

Eric C Stecker  1 , Kyndaron Reinier, Eloi Marijon, Kumar Narayanan, Carmen Teodorescu, Audrey Uy-Evanado, Karen Gunson, Jonathan Jui, Sumeet S Chugh
Affiliations
Multicenter Study

Public health burden of sudden cardiac death in the United States

Eric C Stecker et al. Circ Arrhythm Electrophysiol. 2014 Apr.

Abstract

Background: Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a leading cause of death in the United States, but the relative public health burden is unknown. We estimated the burden of premature death from SCD and compared it with other diseases.

Methods and results: Analyses were based on the following data sources (using most recent sources that provided appropriately stratified data): (1) leading causes of death among men and women from 2009 US death certificate reporting; (2) individual cancer mortality rates from 2008 death certificate reporting from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Program of Cancer Registries; (3) county, state, and national population data for 2009 from the US Census Bureau; and (4) SCD rates from the Oregon Sudden Unexpected Death Study (SUDS) population-based surveillance study of SCD between 2002 and 2004. Cases were identified from multiple sources in a prospectively designed surveillance program. Incidence, counts, and years of potential life lost for SCD and other major diseases were compared. The age-adjusted national incidence of SCD was 60 per 100 000 population (95% confidence interval, 54-66 per 100,000). The burden of premature death for men (2.04 million years of potential life lost; 95% uncertainty interval, 1.86-2.23 million) and women (1.29 million years of potential life lost; 95% uncertainty interval, 1.13-1.45 million) was greater for SCD than for all individual cancers and most other leading causes of death.

Conclusions: The societal burden of SCD is high relative to other major causes of death. Accordingly, improved national surveillance with the goal of optimizing and monitoring SCD prevention and treatment should be a high priority.

Keywords: cause of death; death, sudden, cardiac; epidemiology of SCD; public policy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr. Stecker reports research grants from Biotronik and Boston Scientific. All other authors report no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Years of potential life lost among women and men from sudden cardiac arrest and other leading causes of death DM diabetes mellitus; SCD – sudden cardiac death; YPLL – years of potential life lost. 95% uncertainty intervals in each age group shown for SCD
Figure 2
Figure 2
Years of potential life lost among women and men from sudden cardiac arrest versus top three individual cancers by different age cut-points. CA – cancer; SCD – sudden cardiac death; YPLL – years of potential life lost. 95% uncertainty intervals in each age cut-off shown for SCD
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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