Insights into sudden cardiac death: Exploring the potential relevance of non-diagnostic autopsy findings

Abstract

Aims Unexplained sudden cardiac death (SCD) may be attributable to cardiogenetic disease. Presence or absence of autopsy anomalies detected following premature sudden death direct appropriate clinical evaluation of at-risk relatives towards inherited cardiomyopathies or primary arrhythmia syndromes, respectively. We investigated the relevance of non-diagnostic pathological abnormalities of indeterminate causality (uncertain) such as myocardial hypertrophy, fibrosis, or inflammatory infiltrates to SCD. Methods and results At-risk relatives of unexplained SCD cases aged 1-64 years without prior cardiac disease (n = 98) with either normal and negative (40%, true sudden arrhythmic death syndrome..