Biography
Biography: Yousef Etoom
Abstract
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) and Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in children and adolescents are rare. The underlying cardiac disease associated with SCA varies with age. For children two years old or younger, congenital heart disease is the predominant cause of SCA. For older children and adolescents, there is no dominant cause of SCA. Cardiac disorders include congenital heart disease, primary arrhythmias. Genetic cardiac diseases associated with SCA and SCD include cardiomyopathies, ion channelopathies resulting in conduction defects, and familial Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. The immediate cause of SCA and SCD appears to be a life-threatening and often lethal ventricular tachyarrhythmia. Although SCA is often the initial presenting event, warning signs or symptoms (eg, chest pain, fatigue, seizures, and syncope/ lightheadedness) are noted in at least 40 percent and up to 70 percent of individuals prior to SCA. Other disorders that need to be distinguished from an underlying cardiac disease include vasovagal syncope, migraine headaches, seizures, musculoskeletal conditions that present with chest pain, asthma, near-drowning, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Preventive strategies to reduce SCD include primary screening to identify and manage at-risk individuals, and secondary prevention with successful resuscitation of individuals with SCA.