Genetic Insurance Discrimination in Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndromes

Sudden unexpected death is defined as a natural unexpected fatal event that occurs within 1 hour of the onset of symptoms in an apparently healthy subject or in one whose disease was not so severe as to predict such an abrupt outcome. Approximately 294 851 adults and 2000 children die of sudden unexpected death in the United States each year. Evidence from a Danish population suggests an incidence of sudden cardiac death in those aged 1 to 35 of 2.8 per 100 000 person-years; this estimate accounts for roughly 7% of all deaths in people aged 1 to 35 years. A large proportion of cases in the young are because of arrhythmias secondary to inherited cardiac diseases, primarily cardiomyopathies and channelopathies often referred to as Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndromes (SADS). SADS may account for 17% to 43% of all sudden cardiac death cases in the young. Primary electric diseases or channelopathies include Brugada Syndrome, catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, Long QT interval is a measurement of time between the start of the Q wave and the end of the T wave syndrome which occur because of genetic alterations in the ion channels controlling the electric activity of the heart. Cardiomyopathies include hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, and dilated cardiomyopathy in which arrhythmias are associated with structural changes in the heart.