Sudden Cardiac Death in Childhood

Sudden cardiac death in Teenagers 

The vast majority of people who have a sudden cardiac death had an underlying heart disease. Sudden cardiac death is extremely rare at your age and almost all cases would have an underlying cause. Teenagers who have sudden cardiac deaths usually have an underlying heart condition, such as prolonged QT syndrome and hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. They usually have a family history of sudden cardiac death at a young age. These conditions can usually be detected by listening to the heart or with an EKG. Drug overdose also accounts for many cases of sudden cardiac death in young people. Your family history of heart disease does increase your risk of developing heart disease in the future, but it does not increase your risk of sudden cardiac death at your age. There are actually many things you can do to reduce your risk of future heart disease, such as eating healthy, exercising, monitoring your blood pressure and cholesterol, etc.

Most shortness of breath in teens/young adults is because you are carrying too much weight and you are physically unfit and it is placing a strain on your heart and lungs. Daily walking and weight loss will probably make this go away and you need to start now because this will only get worse and worse. As for the sudden death, it is rare when a teen dies and often, on autopsy, they had a heart defect or an undetected heart condition that caused their demise. A teen's risk for this occurring is very, very minute. Your higher risk is your weight and your physical fitness - both of which you can change and decrease your risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, heart attack and stroke at an early age.

When the coronary artery that supplies blood to heart muscle is blocked either due to a clot or spasm, the affected heart muscle is destroyed resulting in heart attack or Myocardial infarction. Most of the people who get treatment(some without treatment) recover and continue to live normal lives. On the other hand here is the implication of Cardiac Arrest Or Sudden Cardiac death: 

Cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death is the sudden loss of cardiac function, when the heart abruptly stops beating. A person whose heart has stopped will lose consciousness and stop normal breathing, and their pulse and blood pressure will be absent. 

The Background: 

Heart has electrical generating and distribution system of which a tissue called SA node is a primary and AV node is secondary generators. When both generators fail due to heart disease such as heart attack, cardiomyopathy etc. or behave erratically as in Ventricular fibrillation, the heart can no more beat due to lack of or abnormal electrical impulse. This is called Cardiac Arrest. 

As you can see from above description, Cardiac Arrest is not a disease per se, but an end result of any of the many heart diseases that affects the SA node of the heart. 

Causes 

The most common underlying reason for patients to die suddenly from cardiac arrest is coronary heart disease(heart attack). Most cardiac arrests that lead to sudden death occur when the electrical impulses in the diseased heart become rapid (ventricular tachycardia) or chaotic (ventricular fibrillation) or both. This irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) causes the heart to suddenly stop beating. 

Other factors besides heart disease and heart attack can cause cardiac arrest. They include electrocution, drowning, choking and trauma. 

As you can see, heart attack can cause sudden cardiac death whereas sudden cardiac death can occur due to many other causes.