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They are not. But they’re certainly closely related. Across the country, there are about 350,000 sudden cardiac arrests in older adults every year. They were in a normal rhythm, and then they went into an abnormal rhythm that ultimately led to their collapse.
When someone has a heart attack, there is not enough blood flow to the heart muscle to meet the demand. This usually causes chest pain and is a medical emergency that needs immediate attention. Not all heart attacks lead to cardiac arrest, but they can if the damage to the heart muscle is severe.
To say it a different way, you can have sudden cardiac arrest from a cause other than a heart attack even if your coronary arteries that feed the heart muscle are completely normal.
Sudden cardiac arrest in the young, athletic population we’re talking about it is very rare. When it happens, it makes headlines. The causes of sudden cardiac arrest in young, healthy people are almost always very, very different than they are in our parents and grandparents. And that leads to some confusion. It is highly unlikely that an 18-year-old basketball player is going to have a heart attack from blockage of the coronary arteries that feed the heart muscle.
The sudden cardiac arrest in a young athlete is likely related to some other cause. It could be related to a thick heart.
