STAT+: AI wades into a vexing medical mystery: What causes sudden cardiac death?

Article excerpt

It is one of the oldest mysteries in medicine: Why do fundamentally healthy people drop dead? Sudden cardiac arrest kills upward of 350,000 people a year in the U.S., a fate that is particularly tragic because it’s preventable with an implantable defibrillator. The challenge is figuring out who needs one. A study published in Nature on Wednesday uses artificial intelligence to identify those people, and pinpoints a possible reason why they so often evade detection. It reports that a culprit once considered relatively benign, cardiac fibrosis, or scar tissue scattered throughout the heart, is commonly present in people with the highest risk of sudden death. Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…