Sudden Cardiac Death with Structurally Normal Hearts

Abstract

When we are faced with cases of sudden death, there are some fortunately infrequent cases in which the conventional autopsy does not provide a diagnosis. These are cases which should be considered as sudden cardiac death because when death occurs, it is fulminating.

Study of the clinical history may allow us to discard other factors which may cause sudden cardiac death in a normal heart such as miotonic dystrophy or Steinert disease and preexcitation syndromes such as Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome.

In this article, the arrhythmic syndromes are mentioned which have been described to the present and which may assist the forensic physician in his/her study: including the long QT syndrome, the short QT syndrome, the Brugada syndrome, ventricular polymorphic catecolaminergical tachicardia, and idiopatic ventricular fibrillation.