Study links sudden cardiac deaths, families

Men who lost one parent to cardiac event twice

as likely to meet same fate.

The Associated Press DALLAS -- Men who lose a parent to sudden cardiac death are twice as likely as other men to meet the same fate, a new study found. And men whose parents both die from sudden heart death face a ninefold risk of dying the same way, researchers said. The study, believed to be first showing that sudden cardiac death runs in families, could help identify unsuspecting people at high risk for the condition. More than 481,000 heart attacks occur each year, and about half of those -- 250,000 -- are sudden deaths, which occur within an hour of the onset of symptoms. The heart stops working abruptly in a person who may have been diagnosed with heart disease. A typical heart attack, by contrast, usually occurs when an artery serving the heart muscle is blocked. The heart continues to beat and victims usually survive even if care is delayed. "Physicians generally ask patients whether they have a family history of heart attacks," noted French cardiologist Dr. Xavier Jouven, lead author of the study published Tuesday in Circulation, a journal of the heart association. "It would now be useful to ask patients about a possible parental history of sudden death." Researchers followed 7,079 middle-aged men who worked for the city of Paris. The men were studied for an average of 23 years. Of the 118 men who died of sudden cardiac death, 22, or 18.6 percent, had a parent who had died the same way. When the researchers controlled for other risk factors like age, blood pressure and tobacco use, the risk of sudden death among men whose mother or father had experienced sudden death was almost double that of men whose parents didn't suffer sudden death. Men with two parents who suffered sudden death had a risk nine times higher than those whose parents didn't suffer sudden death. "I would consider this a significant contribution to the literature on our understanding of sudden cardiac death," said Dr. Richard L. Page, associate professor of internal medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He wasn't involved in thestudy. "But the next step is to figure out what the abnormality is so we can better establish which patients are at greatest risk."

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