• Vol. 48 No. 5, 156–160
  • 15 May 2019

Sports-Related Sudden Cardiac Deaths in Singapore – An Eleven-Year Review

Sports-related sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a rare but tragic event. The absolute incidence has ranged from 1/80,000 to 1/200,000—depending on the type of sport, competitive nature of the sport, geographical region and methodology used in the analysis.1-5 Amongst young athletes—arbitrarily defined as <35 years old—hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD) have been reported as the most common causes of sports-related SCD in the United States and Italy, respectively.2 In older athletes >35 years old, ischaemic heart disease (IHD) has consistently ranked as the most common cause. However, not all reported sports-related SCDs have been adjudicated by autopsies.3-5 Understanding the epidemiology of sports-related SCD has impact on planning of preparticipation screening and in evaluating the utility of various cardiac screening tests.6

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