Why people die prematurely: reasons. Other signs of death

In medicine, sudden death from heart failure is regarded as a fatal outcome that occurs naturally. This happens both to people who have had heart disease for a long time, and to people who have never used the services of a cardiologist. A pathology that develops quickly, sometimes even instantly, is called sudden cardiac death.

Often there are no signs of a threat to life, and death occurs within a few minutes. The pathology can progress slowly, starting with pain in the heart area and rapid pulse. The duration of the development period is up to 6 hours.

Cardiac death is distinguished between quick and instantaneous. The fulminant variant of coronary heart disease causes death in 80-90% of incidents. Also among the main causes are myocardial infarction, arrhythmia, and heart failure.

Read more about the reasons. Most of them are associated with changes in blood vessels and the heart (arterial spasms, hypertrophy of the heart muscle, atherosclerosis, etc.). Among the common prerequisites are the following:

ischemia, arrhythmia, tachycardia, impaired blood flow;
weakening of the myocardium, ventricular failure;
free fluid in the pericardium;
signs of heart and vascular diseases;
heart injuries;
atherosclerotic changes;
intoxication;
congenital defects of valves, coronary arteries;
obesity, as a result of poor nutrition and metabolic disorders;
unhealthy lifestyle, bad habits;
physical overload.

More often, the occurrence of sudden cardiac death is provoked by a combination of several factors simultaneously. The risk of coronary death increases in people who:

there are congenital cardiovascular diseases, ischemic heart disease, ventricular tachycardia;
there was a previous case of resuscitation after a diagnosed cardiac arrest;
a previous heart attack was diagnosed;
there are pathologies of the valve apparatus, chronic insufficiency, ischemia;
facts of loss of consciousness were recorded;
there is a reduction in blood ejection from the left ventricle by less than 40%;
A diagnosis of cardiac hypertrophy was made.

Secondary significant conditions for increasing the risk of death are considered to be: tachycardia, hypertension, myocardial hypertrophy, changes in fat metabolism, diabetes. Smoking, weak or excessive physical activity have a harmful effect

Signs of heart failure before death

Cardiac arrest is often a complication after suffering a cardiovascular disease. Because of this, the heart can suddenly stop its activity. After the first signs appear, death can occur within 1.5 hours.

Previous dangerous symptoms:

shortness of breath (up to 40 movements per minute);
pressing pain in the heart area;
the skin becomes gray or bluish and becomes colder;
convulsions due to hypoxia of brain tissue;
separation of foam from the oral cavity;
feeling of fear.

Many people experience symptoms of exacerbation of the disease within 5-15 days. Heart pain, lethargy, shortness of breath, weakness, malaise, arrhythmia. Shortly before death, most people experience fear. You should immediately contact a cardiologist.

Signs during an attack:

weakness, fainting due to the high rate of ventricular contraction;
involuntary muscle contraction;
facial redness;
pale skin (it becomes cold, bluish or gray);
inability to determine pulse, heartbeat;
lack of reflexes of the pupils, which have become wide;
irregularity, convulsive breathing, sweating;
loss of consciousness is possible, and after a few minutes breathing cessation.

In case of death, against the background of seemingly good health, symptoms could be present, just not clearly manifested.

Mechanism of disease development

As a result of a study of people who died due to acute heart failure, it was found that most of them had atherosclerotic changes that affected the coronary arteries. As a result, myocardial circulation was disrupted and it was damaged.

Patients experience enlargement of the liver and neck veins, and sometimes pulmonary edema. Coronary circulatory arrest is diagnosed; after half an hour, abnormalities in the myocardial cells are observed. The whole process lasts up to 2 hours. After cardiac activity stops, irreversible changes occur in brain cells within 3-5 minutes.

Often cases of sudden cardiac death occur during sleep after breathing has stopped. In a dream, the chances of salvation are practically absent.

Statistics of mortality from heart failure and age characteristics

One in five people will experience this during their lifetime. Instant death occurs in a quarter of victims. The mortality rate from this diagnosis exceeds the mortality rate from myocardial infarction by approximately 10 times. Up to 600 thousand deaths are reported annually due to this reason. According to statistics, after treatment for heart failure, 30% of patients die within a year.

More often, coronary death occurs in persons 40-70 years old with diagnosed vascular and cardiac disorders. Men are susceptible to it more often: at a young age 4 times, in the elderly – 7 times, by the age of 70 – 2 times. A quarter of patients do not reach the age of 60 years. The risk group includes not only elderly people, but also very young people. The cause of sudden cardiac death at a young age can be vascular spasms, myocardial hypertrophy caused by drug use, as well as excessive stress and hypothermia.

Diagnostic measures

90% of sudden cardiac death episodes occur outside of hospitals. It’s good if the ambulance arrives quickly and the doctors carry out a quick diagnosis.

Emergency doctors note the absence of consciousness, pulse, breathing (or its rare presence), and the absence of pupillary response to light. To continue diagnostic measures, resuscitation actions are first required (indirect cardiac massage, artificial ventilation of the lungs, intravenous administration of medications).

After this, an ECG is performed. In case of a cardiogram in the form of a straight line (cardiac arrest), the administration of adrenaline, atropine, and other drugs is recommended. If resuscitation is successful, further laboratory examinations, ECG monitoring, and cardiac ultrasound are carried out. Based on the results, surgical intervention, implantation of a pacemaker, or conservative treatment with medications is possible.

Urgent Care

With symptoms of sudden death from heart failure, doctors have only 3 minutes to help and save the patient. Irreversible changes occurring in brain cells after this time period lead to death. Timely first aid can save lives.

The development of symptoms of heart failure is facilitated by a state of panic and fear. The patient must calm down, relieving emotional stress. Call an ambulance (cardiology team). Sit comfortably, lower your legs down. Take nitroglycerin (2-3 tablets) under the tongue.

Cardiac arrest often occurs in crowded places. Those around you need to urgently call an ambulance. While waiting for her arrival, you need to provide the victim with an influx of fresh air, if necessary, perform artificial respiration, and perform a cardiac massage.

Prevention

To reduce mortality, preventive measures are important:

regular consultations with a cardiologist, preventive procedures and prescriptions (special attention
patients with hypertension, ischemia, weak left ventricle);
giving up provoking bad habits, ensuring proper nutrition;
control of blood pressure;
systematic ECG (pay attention to non-standard indicators);
prevention of atherosclerosis (early diagnosis, treatment);
implantation methods in risk groups.

Sudden cardiac death is a severe pathology that occurs instantly or in a short period of time. The coronary nature of the pathology is confirmed by the absence of injuries and the sudden and rapid cardiac arrest. A quarter of cases of sudden cardiac death are lightning fast, and without the presence of visible precursors.

You may also be interested in:

How to recognize and treat acute heart failure
Signs of coronary heart disease in men: diagnostic methods

The death of spaceships is always a tragedy on a national scale. Despite the fact that most of these accidents occurred in the United States, unfortunately, they also happened here. The most notorious was the death of the Soyuz-11 crew.

Docking failed

In April 1971, the Soviet Union launched the world's first orbital station, Salyut-1, into orbit. Soon, on April 24, 1971, Soyuz-10 docked with three cosmonauts on board. But the equipment did not behave as planned and the crew of the spacecraft was unable to board the station. I had to return to Earth. After correcting the technical errors, the next start of the crew consisting of Alexey Leonov, Valery Kubasov and Peter Kolodin was scheduled. However, their flight did not take place due to unexpectedly revealed health problems with Valery Kubasov. According to the rules, a backup crew had to fly: Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev. During the flight, the cosmonauts had to attempt a re-docking with Salyut-1 and repair components that did not work during the previous attempt. At the same time, the crew removed from the flight was extremely upset, because Alexey Leonov already saw himself as the commander of the world’s first orbital station. Nevertheless, the crew of Georgy Dobrovolsky went into orbit, and Alexey Leonov went home to Moscow.

"Salyut-1"

The second time, the docking was successful, but during the entire time the cosmonauts were at the station, they were forced to constantly deal with unpleasant incidents. Once there was even a fire. Volkov suggested immediately moving to the descent module, which he warned Moscow about, but Dobrovolsky and Patsayev showed determination and successfully fixed the problem. The cosmonauts spent 23 days at the station, setting another record for flight duration. Problems with technology continued during preparations for returning to Earth. Before the undocking of Soyuz-11 and Salyut-1, a sensor suddenly lit up indicating that the hatch was leaking. For several agonizing minutes, the cosmonauts, trying to fix the problem, closed the hatch again. Finally, the sensor indicating a malfunction went out, and the module rushed towards the Earth. However, during the descent the crew did not communicate with the flight control center. The module landed in automatic mode. Anticipating evil, rescuers rushed to remove the astronauts from the landing module. Unfortunately, they were all dead.

Causes of the tragedy

The first inspection of the landing module showed that all systems were working normally, except for the ventilation valve through which air was supplied. It opened earlier than expected, when the module was still in the vacuum of space. The pressure in the capsule with the astronauts dropped, the air evaporated, and after about two minutes the crew members' hearts stopped. Moreover, the astronauts immediately realized what had happened and tried to close the ill-fated valve, but did not have time. They had only 20 seconds to fix the problem, which, of course, was not enough. The government commission attributed the reason for the abnormal opening of the valve to accident and unforeseen circumstances.

Soviet fighter pilot Valentin Bondarenko could become the first man in space. In any case, he had a chance of this... But he simply did not live to see his first flight: he died by a stupid accident during testing.

First squad

Valentin Vasilyevich Bondarenko was born on February 16, 1937 in Kharkov. His father, the head of a workshop at the Kharkov fur factory, went to the front in the first days of the war. Together with his mother and older brother, Valentin survived the German occupation. As a high school student, he began studying at the Kharkov flying club. In 1954, after graduating from school, he entered the Voroshilovgrad Military Aviation School, after its disbandment he transferred to Grozny, and then to the Armavir School, from which he graduated with honors in 1957. Bondarenko served in the aviation units of the Air Force of the Baltic Military District.

On April 28, 1960, Valentin’s cherished dream came true: after careful selection, he was enrolled in the first squad of Soviet cosmonauts. Out of several thousand applicants, only 29 people were selected.

Initially, Valentin was not one of the six candidates for space flight on the Vostok spacecraft. But for various reasons, several selected future cosmonauts dropped out of action, and Bondarenko was brought in for training.

Ridiculous death

The tests included a ten-day stay in a pressure chamber, the purpose of which was to test the reaction to the absence of external stimuli. It was believed that the conditions in the chamber were close to the conditions inside the spacecraft. It was located at the Air Force Research Institute-7 (now the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine).

At the end of the experiment, Valentin was informed that he could remove the medical sensors attached to his body. There were red marks left at the attachment points, which Bondarenko wiped with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol. After that, the young man, without looking, threw the cotton wool towards the trash can. But by an unfortunate accident, it landed on the spiral of a hot electric stove and immediately burst into flames... Since the chamber was filled with almost pure oxygen, the flame quickly spread. Bondarenko's woolen training suit caught fire.

It was not possible to open the chamber quickly due to the large pressure drop. When it was finally opened, the cadet was still alive. Doctors at the Botkin Hospital fought for his life for 8 hours. He died on March 23, 1961, just 19 days before Gagarin’s flight, who, together with his squad comrades, spent several hours in his hospital... The cause of death was burn shock.

Secret Hero

The death of Senior Lieutenant Valentin Bondarenko was not reported anywhere: in those days, everything related to space was strictly classified. However, on June 17, 1961, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Bondarenko was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Star “for the successful completion of the government’s assignment.”

At Bondarenko’s grave, located in Kharkov at the Filippovsky cemetery, an obelisk was erected with the inscription: “In blessed memory from fellow pilots.” Only in the 80s did the postscript appear: “-cosmonauts of the USSR.”

Bondarenko left behind his wife Anna and son Alexander. For some time they continued to live in Star City, where Anna worked at the Cosmonaut Training Center, then they left for Kharkov, where they had relatives. Until Sasha’s 16th birthday, he was paid a pension of 100 rubles for his father - quite decent money at that time. Subsequently, Alexander Bondarenko followed in his father’s footsteps and became a military pilot.

Only in 1980 did the Western press begin to write about the death of Valentin Bondarenko. In the USSR, an article about him was first published in 1986 in Izvestia. In 1991, one of the lunar craters was named after Bondarenko, and in July 2013, the name of the cosmonaut was given to school No. 93 in the city of Kharkov, where he once studied.

It would seem that the death of Valentin Bondarenko has nothing to do with the space flights themselves - it is simply a tragic accident. However, without such mistakes and tragedies, astronautics could not develop. By the way, this story forced engineers and scientists to reconsider the design of the test pressure chamber, in particular, changing the composition and pressure of the atmosphere, which was taken into account in the further development of manned spacecraft.

Today, in the Museum of the First Flight, located in the city of Gagarin, Smolensk region, in the small homeland of the world’s first man to go into space, you can see a deaf chamber, which is an exact copy of the one in which Valentin Bondarenko died.

Fires - like any manifestation of unbridled elements - always bring destruction and death with them. But those that flare up in public and residential buildings with large numbers of people have particularly severe consequences.

The death of people in fires is largely due to the lack of fire-fighting knowledge and skills among Russian citizens. People often do not know not only basic fire safety rules, but even the telephone number of the nearest fire department. Not to mention actions at the initial moment of fire development before the arrival of fire departments, and methods of self-rescue in an extreme situation. This is especially true for residential buildings, where the largest number of fires and deaths occur.
What causes people to die in a fire? What do you need to know about a fire to stay alive?

1. Fire blinds you, you cannot see in the fire.
If you have never experienced the real factors of a fire, you will be in a state of complete shock.
To your horror, you will learn that in a real fire you cannot see anything. The flame turns everything black. It brings no light. Nothing is visible, only heat and ashes, terrible darkness. You absolutely cannot navigate, you cannot find the exit door you know. Complete loss of orientation due to panic. The fire is black as night, which will lead to inevitable death.

In order to avoid this, use in buildings:
- emergency lighting;
- light indicators “evacuation (emergency) exit”;
- fire safety signs used on escape routes,
including glow in the dark;
- electric lights.

2. Smoke and gas kill, not flame.
A modern apartment is literally filled with objects and materials that, when burned in huge quantities, release more than 70 types of toxic substances (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, diphosgene, phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, etc.). A few breaths in such an atmosphere - and a person can no longer be saved.

Most people die not from fire or collapsed structures, but from smoke and lack of oxygen. Moreover, more than half of those affected by smoke die at the scene of the fire. 42% of survivors suffer severe poisoning, every third of them dies in the hospital without regaining consciousness. About 70% of all those killed in a fire die from exposure to smoke, and the speed of its spread is high: 2-3 minutes in a corridor, 1-1.5 minutes in a stairwell of a ten-story building.

The most dangerous thing is if a fire occurs in a residential building in the middle of the night. Do you think you'll wake up and take action? However, the scary fact is that you won't wake up to the smell of smoke. It will only make you fall asleep even more deeply. You fall into a deep sleep, as if you were under anesthesia. You can't move. Smoke deadens your brain.

Ninety percent of the people firefighters find in smoke look like they were asleep.

If you are in a room filled with smoke, you not only cannot see, but you also cannot breathe. It is similar to if you are drowning and your head is under water. Are you scared. You forget everything you thought you knew about the fire. You get lost, panic, behave unpredictably, because... are not psychologically prepared for such an extreme situation.

To combat smoke the following are used:
- smoke-free stairwells (due to air pressure or floor-by-floor entrances through the airy outer zone along balconies or loggias);
- removing smoke from rooms and corridors through automatically opening smoke exhaust valves by turning on powerful exhaust fans;
- installation of self-closing doors with sealed doorways in the corridors on stairwells that prevent the spread of smoke;
- installation of an automatic fire alarm system (smoke and heat sensors, manual fire alarm buttons, fire alarm bells, fire alarm stations);
- fire warning and evacuation control systems;
- personal respiratory protection equipment in case of fire;
- autonomous fire detectors powered by batteries for apartments in residential buildings;
- group and individual rescue kits, rope ladders.

3. Heat from fire can cause instant death. Heat is terrible. He kills. The heat alone is fatal within seconds. It's very difficult to describe in words. At 65°C, your body stops functioning, your lungs literally evaporate, and you lose consciousness.

In a room, a fire lasting just over one minute creates a temperature in the smoke layer of 370°C. If the head is unprotected, then instant death occurs. At the top, the temperature and smoke concentration are even higher. When everything that can burn in the room is burning, the heat will reach its climax. The smoke itself is ready to explode, it seems that the entire structure will fly into the air. There is no chance of staying alive in this heat.

4. A fire leaves no time to think. You need to have time to escape from the fire.
Most people think they have time when there is a fire. But this is not true; in a fire there is no time.

A fire starts in a trash can. He goes unnoticed. A minute later the sofa catches fire and smoke begins to fill the room. The temperature is rising. After two minutes the person may lose consciousness.

Three minutes later the whole room is on fire. No one can survive anymore. In four minutes the corridors will become impassable. It only takes 5 minutes for a fire inside a house to cause the death of all its inhabitants. So, from 3 to 5 minutes and that’s the end of it all! It turns out that during a fire, time can become your worst enemy.

How long does it take to survive a kitchen fire? Most people think they have 10 minutes. But in fact, after 30 seconds the fire will become uncontrollable. You need to have time to jump out without stopping or thinking about things, close the door behind you (but not lock it) and notify the fire department.

In order to have time to evacuate, there is an unshakable rule: in children's institutions, children of primary groups and preschool age are not dressed, but wrapped in a blanket and taken out of the danger zone. School students are led out under the guidance of teachers or educators who are personally responsible for the group of children with whom they studied. In hotels, it is prohibited to pack suitcases, etc. for quick evacuation.
5. In case of fire, panic may occur.

People panic and behave unpredictably. Sometimes more people die when panic occurs than from fire hazards. It is quite obvious that a person who was psychologically prepared and trained in such an extreme situation would behave differently.

6. The death of people in fires is largely due to the lack of basic fire-fighting knowledge and self-defense skills among the population.
Statistics show that most people do not think about fires, do not care about the safety of their homes, and neglect their own safety and the health of their loved ones. This is evidenced by the lack of a fire extinguisher, which would allow elderly people and schoolchildren to easily extinguish a fire that started on a TV, electrical appliance, grease, or oil in the kitchen. Almost a few citizens have provided their apartments with commercially available autonomous fire detectors powered by a regular battery. They are installed in the hallway, kitchen, room, and when smoke appears, they emit a sharp sound, loud enough to attract attention and wake up those sleeping. Unfortunately, in society there is a clear underestimation of the reality of the fire threat and its dangerous factors.

Evidence of this is our attitude towards balconies and loggias of residential buildings. Most of them are glazed, the hatches of the emergency staircases of the balconies are tightly closed, openings are laid for the passage through the loggias, and furniture is installed in the partitions. All this will not allow you to independently evacuate to a non-burning floor, or to stand behind the partition of a balcony or loggia in the event of a fire in your apartment if you were unable to leave it on time or because the main evacuation staircase was blocked by smoke. In this case, there will be little chance of surviving until the arrival of the fire department, especially for those who today do not think about it, do not have personal respiratory protection, or a rope ladder, a rescue kit for evacuation through balconies, loggias, windows , electric flashlight, and also ignores conducting fire drills at home, as citizens of developed foreign countries do.

FGKU "9th detachment of the Federal Border Guard Service in the Altai Territory"

According to the definition of the World Health Organization, sudden death includes cases of death of practically healthy individuals or patients whose condition was considered quite satisfactory. It is obvious that most people have certain health conditions that do not have a significant impact on everyday life and do not reduce its quality. In other words, pathological changes in organs and systems, if they exist in such people, are of a persistently compensated nature. Such representatives of humanity are classified as “virtually healthy.” It is in this group that the phenomenon that scientists call sudden death occurs most often. What is surprising in this phrase is not the second word (all people die sooner or later), but the first. Sudden is an unexpected death that occurs without any warning, in the midst of complete well-being. This catastrophe has so far defied any prediction. It has no precursors or signs that could alert doctors. Studying numerous, increasingly common, cases of sudden death, experts came to the conclusion that this event always has vascular causes, which allows it to be classified as a vascular catastrophe.

A major businessman with a typical Georgian surname, one of the heirs to the wealth of the collapsed Soviet Union, had already endured all the hardships of the division of property and lived a healthy and correct life in London. He probably had enough money for a full medical examination, and his personal doctors would not have missed even a suspicious murmur in the heart area. Death came suddenly and completely unexpectedly. He was a little over 50. An autopsy did not reveal any cause of death.

There are no accurate statistics on sudden death because there is no generally accepted definition of this concept. However, it is estimated that every 60-75 seconds in the United States, 1 person dies from unexpected cardiac arrest. The problem of sudden cardiac death, which has attracted the attention of cardiologists for many decades, has become acute again in recent years, when large population-based studies conducted by the World Health Organization demonstrated an increasing incidence of sudden death among adults, and not only adults. It turned out that cases of sudden death are not so rare, and this problem requires close study.

During a pathological examination (autopsy) of the deceased, as a rule, it is not possible to detect signs of damage to the heart or blood vessels that could explain the sudden stop of blood circulation. Another feature of sudden death is that if timely assistance is provided, such patients can be revived, and in practice this happens quite often. Typically, resuscitation is performed through artificial respiration and closed cardiac massage. Sometimes, to restore blood circulation, a punch to the chest, in the area of the heart, is enough. If a disaster occurs in a medical facility or in the presence of emergency doctors, then a high-voltage electric discharge is used to restore blood circulation - defibrillation.

Sudden death, which is based on pathological changes in the heart, is usually called sudden cardiac death. Cardiac causes account for the majority of sudden deaths. The basis for such a judgment is statistical data indicating that pathological changes in the heart are noted, even if the victim has never complained about his state of health. Atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries can be found in more than half of people who die as a result of sudden cessation of blood circulation. Scars on the heart muscle, which indicate a previous heart attack, and an increase in heart mass are found in 40-70% of cases. Such obvious causes as fresh blood clots in the coronary arteries in sudden cardiac death can be found extremely rarely. With careful examination (it is clear that all cases of sudden death serve as the basis for careful examination), it is almost always possible to detect some pathology. However, this does not make sudden death any less mysterious. After all, all changes in the heart and blood vessels exist and form for a long time, and death occurs suddenly and completely unexpectedly. The latest methods of studying the cardiovascular system (ultrasound scanning, spiral computed tomography) detect the smallest changes in blood vessels and heart without any opening of the body. And these data show that certain changes can be found in almost all people who, fortunately, for the most part live well into old age.

Since in cases of sudden death no destruction of the cardiovascular system can be detected, it remains to be assumed that this catastrophe is associated with dysfunction, and not with a change in the structure of the heart. This assumption was confirmed with the development and introduction into clinical practice of methods for long-term monitoring of heart function (ECG recording over hours and days). It became clear that sudden death most often (65-80%) is directly related to ventricular fibrillation.

Ventricular fibrillation is a very frequent (up to 200 or more per minute), erratic contraction of the ventricles of the heart - fluttering. Fluttering is not accompanied by effective contractions of the heart, so the latter ceases to perform its main, pumping function. Blood circulation stops and death occurs. Sudden ventricular tachycardia - an increase in contractions of the ventricles of the heart to 120-150 beats per minute - sharply increases the load on the myocardium, quickly depletes its reserves, which leads to cessation of blood circulation.

This is what a disruption of the normal rhythm into a state of ventricular flutter looks like on an electrocardiogram:

As a rule, flutter is followed by complete cardiac arrest due to depletion of its energy reserves. But fibrillation cannot be considered the cause of sudden death; rather, it is its mechanism.
It is generally accepted that the most important causative factor of sudden cardiac death is acute myocardial ischemia - a violation of the blood supply to the heart muscle caused by spasm or blockage of the coronary arteries. Exactly so: it is generally accepted, because nothing else comes to mind when experts consider the heart as an organ that consumes blood like an engine that consumes fuel. Indeed, oxygen starvation leads to disruptions in the ability of the heart muscle to contract and increases sensitivity to irritation, which contributes to rhythm disturbances. It has been established that disturbances in the nervous regulation of the heart (imbalance of autonomic tone) can lead to rhythm disruption. It is known for sure that stress contributes to the occurrence of arrhythmia - hormones change the excitability of the heart muscle. It is also known that a lack of potassium and magnesium has a significant effect on the functioning of the heart and, under certain conditions, can lead to heart failure. There is no doubt that some drugs and toxic factors (for example, alcohol) can lead to damage to the conduction system of the heart or contribute to impaired myocardial contractility. But, despite the clarity of the individual mechanisms of disturbances in the normal functioning of the heart, many cases of sudden death do not receive a satisfactory explanation. Let us recall the regularly recurring cases of death of young athletes.

24-year-old French tennis player Mathieu Moncur, who was found dead in his apartment in the suburbs of Paris on the night of Tuesday July 7, 2008, died of cardiac arrest.

As a rule, this group of trained, physically well-developed young people has fairly good medical supervision. It is unlikely that among professional athletes who have managed to achieve extraordinary success through their physical efforts, there are people suffering from serious diseases of the heart and blood vessels. It is even more difficult to imagine coronary insufficiency in people who regularly endure enormous physical exertion. The relatively high statistics of sudden death among athletes can only be explained by obvious overload or the use of pharmacological agents that increase physical endurance (doping). According to statistics, in young people sudden death is most often associated with sports (about 20%) or occurs during sleep (30%). The high incidence of cardiac arrest during sleep convincingly refutes the coronary nature of sudden death. If not in all cases, then in a significant part of them. During sleep, physiological changes in rhythm occur, which are characterized by bradycardia - a decrease in heart rate to 55-60 beats per minute. In trained athletes this frequency is even lower.

V. Turchinsky, an outstanding athlete and simply a beautiful person who promotes and leads a healthy lifestyle, suddenly falls and dies before reaching the age of 50.

Several newspaper lines are awarded to famous athletes, politicians, and artists who suddenly died. But many such disasters also happen to ordinary people who are not written about in the newspapers.
- He was completely healthy! – shocked relatives and friends are amazed for several days. But the inexorable convincingness of what happened soon makes one believe the facts: if he died, it means he was sick.

Sudden death significantly more often overtakes another category of patients - people suffering from mental illness. Researchers associate this phenomenon with the use of psychotropic drugs, most of which affect the conduction system of the heart.

It is known that alcoholics are susceptible to sudden death. Here everything is more or less clear: ethyl alcohol destroys the myocardium and the conduction system of the heart. One day, deprived of energy and rhythmic control, the heart simply stops after another binge.

It would seem that now the circle of victims is defined: the risk group consists of people with heart diseases that do not manifest themselves until a certain time, athletes for whom physical overload is part of their lifestyle, numerous representatives of the population who abuse alcohol or drugs.

But in this series, cases of death of young children stand apart - sudden infant mortality syndrome. British scientists who studied 325 such cases came to the conclusion that most often the danger occurs in the 13th week of life. Almost always, the death of an infant occurs during sleep; More often this happens in the cold season and when the baby is lying on his stomach. Some researchers associate sudden death of infants with odors (perfumes, tobacco smoke).

Despite the clarity of the connection between risk factors and tragic cases of sudden death, the majority of people who died suddenly never had these factors. Sudden death has become a habit of visiting completely healthy people.