Pot Belly Boosts Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 35 mins ago WEDNESDAY, May 9 (HealthDay News) -- A "spare tire" around the midsection raises the odds of sudden cardiac death in obese people, a new study finds.

A larger waist-to-hip ratio matters even more than body-mass index when it comes to sudden cardiac death risk, said study researcher Dr. Selcuk Adabag, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Body-mass index is a measure of weight relative to height used to determine normal weight and obesity.

Obesity, a moderate risk factor for sudden cardiac death, and apple-shaped bodies often go hand in hand.

"The significance of this study is that it shows that abdominal obesity is an independent risk factor for sudden cardiac death, even after accounting for factors such as diabetes, hypertension and coronary heart disease," said Adabag, who is also a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis.

Adabag was scheduled to present the findings Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society in Boston.

Sudden cardiac death is responsible for more than 250,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is defined as death that occurs within an hour of initial symptoms. Besides obesity, risk factors include coronary heart disease and heart rhythm problems.

For the study, Adabag looked at the records of more than 15,000 people with an average age of 54 from four U.S. locales who were enrolled in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study. Over 13 years, more than 300 of the participants experienced sudden cardiac death.

After Adabag took into account age, sex, race, education, smoking status and family history of heart disease, he found that body-mass index, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio all were linked with sudden cardiac death.

"I expected there would be some relationship with all

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Heart Test Spots Sudden Death Risk in Young Athletes

HealthDay – 16 hrs ago FRIDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- Electrocardiograph (EKG) screening of young athletes can help identify those at risk for sudden cardiac death, according to a new study.

Researchers screened nearly more than 1,300 young athletes and conducted EKGs on 586 of them based on medical history, family history, a physical exam or prior EKG. Six athletes were found to have a heart disorder known to cause sudden cardiac death.

The study looked at how sensitive and specific the EKGs were as tests. Sensitivity refers to how confidently a doctor can rule out a problem and that it isn't a "false negative." Specificity refers to how sure a doctor can be that a positive test result is accurate.

For medical history alone, the sensitivity and specificity to detect heart disorders linked to sudden cardiac death were 33 percent and 69 percent. For physical exam, the figures were 16 percent and 91 percent. For EKG, sensitivity was 100 percent and specificity was 95 percent.

Half of disorders known to cause sudden cardiac death were detected by EKG alone, said Dr. Jessie Fudge, who is completing a fellowship in primary care sports medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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Bed-Sharing, Smoking Play Role in Sudden Infant Death

HealthDay – 1 hr 45 mins ago MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Although the rate of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) dropped by more than 50 percent following the start of a U.S. campaign encouraging parents to put babies to sleep on their backs, new research suggests that risk factors other than "tummy sleeping" may explain why SIDS rates have not declined further.

Chief among those other risk factors are bed-sharing (where the baby shares a sleeping surface with a parent or parents), smoking exposure before and after birth, and having objects in the crib, the study revealed.

"It's not that there are new risk factors; it's that now not all babies are sleeping on their tummies, so other things can be uncovered," explained study co-author Felicia Trachtenberg, a senior research scientist at New England Research Institutes, in Watertown, Mass.

The findings, culled from an analysis of 568 SIDS deaths that occurred in San Diego between 1991 and 2008, appear online March 26 and in the April print issue of Pediatrics.

Tummy sleeping is still the leading risk factor for SIDS, according to study co-author Dr. Henry Krous, director of the San Diego SIDS/Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood Research Project at Rady Children's Hospital.

Nevertheless, the Back-to-Sleep program, started in 1994, has made a huge difference.

"It has been the most successful program that one could imagine," Krous said. "The incidence rates from SIDS have dropped dramatically in the United States, and similar public educational campaigns in Western Europe and Australia and New Zealand have had similar dramatic declines."

The study found that the percentage of infants who died of SIDS who were found on their stomachs decreased from about 84 percent to 30 percent.

Certain environmental or genetic factors -- including being black, male, premature or exposed to alcohol or smoking in the uterus -- also made a baby more susceptible.

"Exposure to cigarette smoke, either when the baby is in utero or after the baby has been born, is a very important risk factor for SIDS," Krous said.

Physical risks around the time of death included having the head covered; sleeping on an adult mattress, couch or playpen; soft bedding; bed sharing, and having cold symptoms.

Bed-sharing increased from 19 percent to almost 38 percent during the study period.

Dr. Carl Hunt, a research professor of pediatrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., commented on the findings.

"The most striking thing is that SIDS mortality rates have fallen considerably over this period of time, and the prevalence of prone sleeping has decreased significantly," Hunt said.

He noted that bed-sharing increased the most with infants younger than 2 months of age. The issue of bed-sharing has been very controversial, because of "concern that

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