Sumeet Chugh, MD, and his team of researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles received a $2.36 million grant to study how to predict sudden cardiac arrest.
The grant is from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and will support research with patients 35 to 59 years old — a change from the norm, since most published studies have focused on patients 60 years old and older.
Sudden cardiac arrest is the result of defective electrical activity in the heart, making it different from heart attacks usually caused by closed arteries. "Preliminary research shows that middle-aged people who have sudden cardiac arrest are more likely to present without prior warning," said Dr. Chugh. "And they are more likely to be obese and nonwhite."
Eduardo Marban, MD, PhD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, called sudden cardiac arrest "one of the great mysteries in cardiology." He acknowledged the importance of Dr. Chugh's research, as the current survival rate of sudden cardiac arrest is less than 5 percent. "We might achieve better survival rates only if we can predict who is at greatest risk."