Preventing Premature Death Needs Sustained, Comprehensive Effort

When you neglect your vital organs but focus on your fit body looks, you eventually become like a swanky car with a rundown battery and a worn-out motor.

- DR P.S. VENKATESH RAO

The recent sudden deaths of young and fit celebrities Shefali Jariwala (42), Sidharth Shukla (40), and Puneeth Rajkumar (46), and at least 22 young and middle-aged people in Hassan district of Karnataka over the last 45 days, without any visible symptoms, reportedly due to heart attacks (myocardial infarction, MI), has highlighted the problem of premature sudden deaths.

A blockage in the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscles is the usual cause of an MI (heart attack) in those above 35 years of age. In people younger than 35, an abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) due to congenital (since birth) or genetic heart electrical system issues is often the cause of sudden cardiac arrest (the heart stops beating). If someone can't revive you after your heart stops beating for any reason (cardiac arrest), sudden cardiac death follows.

Sudden cardiac death affects males twice as often as it does females. It's rare in children. Many sudden deaths in young adults occur due to previously undiagnosed heart conditions. A blunt chest injury, often in sports, can trigger a fatal arrhythmia. Certain medications, tobacco products, alcohol, and recreational drugs can cause dangerous heart rhythms and sudden death.

Autopsy of 66 persons in the age group 18–35 years, who died suddenly in Turkey, showed that death was due to cardiac causes in 87.9%, most of them due to MI. As per the Cleveland Clinic, in the United States, more than 356,000 people have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital yearly, and only about 10% of them survive.