There are many causes for Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) among athletes. When the athlete is younger than thirty five, the cause is usually a structural abnormality in the heart muscle, or coronary arteries. These conditions are usually congenital, or present at birth, and they are difficult to detect. Gross abnormalities are identified at bir

th or in early childhood and when things go wrong or death occurs, there is an explanation for it. With more subtle abnormalities, there may be no symptoms and they are very hard to detect, and an athlete may just suddenly collapse and die because the abnormality was triggered just right, and it completely shuts off blood flow to the majority of the heart muscles. There is no physical exam or routine testing that can identify this, so there is no real way to stop it. Every athlete should have a thorough physical exam prior to engaging in training, because there are a number of symptoms that a skilled physician can identify. When training though, it is very important to investigate new or unusual symptoms. Palpations, chest pain, or blackouts should not go unrecognized. When an athlete is over the age of 35, the main cause of SCD is Coronal Artery Disease. Coronal Artery Disease is very common worldwide. Exercise protects against this but does not make you 100% immune. The risk factors for CAD are smoking, elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a family history of the problem. Sudden death is less common than death from other medical conditions. With high school and college students, sudden death occurs in 1 in every 200,000, but with adults, it is greatly increased to 1 in every 50,000. Both these numbers are low, showing that sudden death of an athlete is rare, but when it happens, it makes you take a step back and wonder wha

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