Sudden cardiac death: good perspectives with this major health care issue

Excerpt

In Europe, it is estimated that 350,000 people are dying each year following sudden cardiac death with unsuccessful out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (OOH-CPR) [1]. This is almost 1,000 patients every day over the whole year. The same happens in the USA and in other industrialized areas of our world. Thus, sudden cardiac death is one of the leading causes of death in industrialized nations [1]. It is most probably the “killer number three” following cancer and other cardiovascular causes [2]. It is good to see that more and more studies and activities are being initiated to further elucidate and combat this problem [3]. One thousand deaths per day—this is as if two jumbo jets would crash every day during the whole year, without any survivors. If this would happen, would not we invest billions of euros, not only to search for victims and causes, but also to put an immediate stop to it? …