Sudden deaths among athletes are particularly shocking because they strike people who appear to be in excellent physical health. Sometimes, champions collapse live on television. “In France, about 800 amateur athletes fall victim to this each year, along with about 15 professionals,” said Xavier Jouven, a cardiologist at the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou in Paris. In 80% of cases, the victims were men aged 40 to 50.
Over eight out of 10 times, these deaths are linked to cardiac arrhythmias – most often, ventricular fibrillation, an electrical storm that sweeps through the heart. In half of cases, the cause of the arrhythmia could be identified: Usually, it was a heart disease that caused the organ to thicken or dilate, or a pathology of the coronary arteries that led to a heart attack.
But in the other half of cases, no cause was found despite extensive testing. “The paradox of these unexplained sudden deaths is that there are devices to prevent them, particularly implantable defibrillators,” explained Michel Haïssaguerre, cardiologist and electrophysiologist at the Université de Bordeaux. “But we still need to be able to identify people at risk. Right now, there is no method to detect them.”
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