Temporal Trends in the Incidence Sudden Cardiac Death

Introduction: Improvements in primary and secondary preventions in cardiovascular diseases has led to substantially reduction in the incidence of coronary artery disease. However, whether these improvements have translated to an improvement in the incidence of sudden cardiac death has not been fully evaluated. The main objective of the current study was the evaluate incidence of SCD by age groups.

Methods: We have utilized Ontario’s major health care administrative databases and looked at all patients between the ages 35-75 that died out of the hospital from cardiac causes from 2003 to 2013. We calculated the yearly age-standardized rates of SCD and compared SCD rates along the years in the different age groups and among different low-risk and high-risk populations.

Results: Between the years 2003 and 2013, 36,334 patients died from SCD. The overall rates of SCD had been decreased in 27% with an average yearly decline of 1.6 deaths to 100,000. The decrease in SCD was noticed in all age groups but was most striking among the elderly population. The decrease was less pronounced in patients between the ages 35-49 and 50-59 years old with a yearly decrease of only 0.3 and 1.1 deaths to 100,000 respectively (FIGURE 1).

Conclusions: We found a substantial decrease in SCD rates among patients with heart diseases, but relative stable rates among low risk individuals. These findings suggest that there is still a gap in prevention of SCD among different populations.