Sudden cardiac death (SCD) generally refers to sudden cardiovascular death of a person with or without pre-existing heart disease. This is a retrospective study conducted at the Department of Anatomy and Pathological Cytology at Aristide Le Dantec Hospital in Senegal. This study covers a period of 7 years from January 1st, 2000 to December 31st, 2006. During this 7-year period we collected 235 cases of sudden cardiovascular death out of a total of 3717 forensic autopsies, representing a frequency of 6.32%. Sudden cardiovascular deaths accounted for 75.3% of all 312 sudden deaths. 96.1% were black compared to 3.9% Caucasians. The average age of the patients was 46.86 years with extremes ranging from 17 to 86 years. The most affected age group was between 50 - 59 years old, representing 23.4% of the cases. The sex ratio was 4.3 in favour of men. Men aged 50 - 59 were the most affected, while women were more affected in the 20 - 29 age group. Cardiomyopathies constituted 54.9% with 90% of dilated cardiomyopathies of which 75% were male and 10% of hypertrophic cardiomyopathies more frequent also in men. Valvulopathies came in 3rd position with 3.4% of the cases and in 75% of the cases they were poly-valvulopathies. Atherosclerosis was incriminated in 2.5% of the cases and aortic localization was the most represented. Aortic dissection was implicated in 6 cases out of 235 or 2.5%. It was isolated in 4 cases (without other cardiac conditions), and in the other 2 cases it was accompanied by other cardiac lesions including hypertrophy, pericarditis and endocarditis. The other causes found were interauricular communication (n = 1) and pericarditis (n = 2). Sudden cardiovascular death is a major global public health problem. The lack of epidemiological data on sudden death in Africa motivated our work, which led us to note that 75.3% of all sudden deaths in adults were of cardiovascular origin.
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