Sudden Cardiac Death Much More Likely to Strike Men

Men, especially black men, are at a relatively high risk of sudden cardiac death over their lifetime compared with women, a new study finds. That lifetime risk in men aged 40 and over is one in eight, or 12.3%—triple that of women, whose risk is one in 24, or just over 4%, the study found.

"Compare this with the lifetime risk for lung cancer, which is one in 12 for men and one in 16 for colon cancer, and one in 17 for both in women," said Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, lead author of the study presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association. "These are diseases we think heavily about the consequences and certainly screen people."

"Relatively high lifetime risk estimates for such a devastating disease hopefully have implications for people thinking about prevention efforts," added Lloyd-Jones, who is associate professor of medicine and preventive medicine at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago.

Traditionally, estimates have focused on a person's risk of sudden cardiac death over the next 10 years. These new numbers are the first lifetime estimates for sudden cardiac death, Lloyd- Jones said.

The study authors looked at sudden cardiac death data on nearly 5,000 U.S. adults involved in three major heart studies, following them from age 40 through 95.

Black men had roughly twice the risk as white men at any given age, while black and white women had roughly the same risk all the way through. The risk for sudden cardiac death actually went down for both genders as age went up, the research team noted. That's because "we've depleted some of those individuals who were going to have an event at younger age, but at [age] 80 many things are competing to kill us so at that point sudden death is less likely to be a cause of death," Lloyd-Jones said.

— Source: Brigham and Women's Hospital