SADS deaths could be curtailed

THE 19 people a day who drop dead from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome could be saved if community-based teams are trained in the use of lifesaving cardiac equipment.

Leading cardiologist Dr Joseph Galvin commented that while the condition has come to prominence following the sudden deaths of young sports stars, more than 70% of the 6,500 annual SADS deaths happen in the home.

“Seventy to 80% of cardiac arrests don’t occur in the sports field, they occur in the home,” Dr Galvin told RTÉ radio yesterday.

SADS is caused by a variety of heart conditions that may result in unexpected cardiac arrests, often in teenagers. As half of those who die display no warning symptoms, quick access to a defibrillator, a machine that sends a shock-wave to kick-start the heart, could greatly improve survival rates.

“These are difficult things to pick up, so the bulk of lives will be saved through community-based automatic external defibrillator programmes,” said Dr Galvin. Costing less than €2,000, access to defibrillators remains the difference between life or death for those who will not survive long enough for an ambulance to reach them.

“Irrespective of the underlying cause, the mechanism, particularly in young healthy people, is virtually always the same, a lethal cardiac electrical disturbance that can be fixed with an electrical shock,” he said. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact numbers who die from SADS as death certificates do not specifically list cardiac arrest or SADS as a possible cause of death.

“You can’t put cardiac arrest on a death certificate, this is one problem because sometimes a post mortem shows nothing,” he said.

However, based on US figures, it is possible to determine that, of the 10,000 people who die of “cardiac causes” each year in Ireland, around 64% of them, or 6,500, are SADS deaths.

There can also be a relationship between exercise/sporting activity and sudden cardiac death. “There are one in 500 or one in 1,000 young people who have an underlying heart condition because of which it may be dangerous to exercise,” said Dr Galvin.