Sudden arrhythmic death: from basic science to clinical practice

catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia Sudden cardiac death refers to unexpected death attributable to a cardiac cause occurring within 1 h of the onset of symp-toms (NICE, 2006). It often results from cardiac arrhythmias and is a major worldwide cause of morbidity and mortality. Arrhythmias account for 180,000 to 250,000 deaths per year in the United States and ∼70,000 deaths per year in the United Kingdom (NICE, 2006; Chugh et al., 2008). These commonly present as ventricular fibrillation often preceded by ventricu-lar tachycardia (Turakhia and Tseng, 2007). Cardiac arrhythmias most frequently result from underlying ischaemic heart disease (Behr et al., 2003). However, ∼4 % may arise from ion channel abnormalities (Tung et al., 1994; Martin et al., 2012) with their own implications for management (Martin et al., 2011). In all events, cardiac arrhythmias follow disruption of the normal cel