Beyond sudden death in the athlete: how to identify family members at risk.

Abstract

Sudden death in young athletes is always a catastrophic event which focuses medical and public attention on the prevention of similar tragedies in other sporting participants. In this review article, we discuss the importance of evaluation of family members, who, by virtue of the familial nature of many of the diseases that cause sudden cardiac death, are potentially at risk of a similar outcome. We show that a systematic approach to the clinical evaluation of relatives of sudden death victims has a high yield in the identification of other affected family members and may prevent further catastrophic events in the same family.