Physician-Researcher To Use $2.3M Grant on Cardiac Arrest Research

A physician-researcher at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute will use a $2.3 million grant to study how to better predict sudden cardiac arrest, the deadly heart condition that kills an estimated 300,000 Americans each year, the institute announced today.

In recent years, Dr. Sumeet S. Chugh and his team of researchers have identified several risk factors for sudden cardiac arrest, including levels of sex hormones in the blood, genetics and electrical and structural abnormalities of the heart.

The grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute will support research with patients 35-59 years old. To date, most published studies have focused almost exclusively on patients 60 and older.

The societal burden is greater when someone in their middle years is stricken with sudden cardiac arrest because if they die, they are more likely to leave behind dependents, and if they survive, they are less likely to be self-supporting, said Chugh, associate director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and the Pauline and Harold Price Chair in Cardiac Electrophysiology Research.

Because fewer than 5 percent of sudden cardiac arrest patients survive, the only way to protect patients is to be able to predict who is more likely to experience the condition, he said.

—City News Service

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