Talk:List of diseases causing sudden death

Subject
The subject seems to have thrown a couple of people at the AFD page, so let me add a few things:


 * Sudden death is sudden. It happens within 60 minutes, from first symptom to last breath.  This is about people dropping dead, not about people who spend days, weeks, months, or years dealing with a long-term disease process.  Most diseases do not produce sudden deaths.
 * Sudden death is – by accepted definition in the literature – a natural death. Therefore it does not include deaths from accident, misadventure, suicide, or homicide.  Trauma might kill people unexpectedly, but it's not natural and therefore excluded.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Animals
If anyone feels like typing for a long time, then the "Large Animal Internal Medicine" source has boxed lists of several dozens of causes of sudden death in large animals, subdivided by category of cause, with horses split from ruminants, and neatly alphabetized. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

What was hidden when this was redirected
A sudden death is a natural, unexpected death in an apparently healthy person, or a person for whom a relatively minor disease is not expected to result in death. It is not death due to complications of a known disease, such as an infection that worsens over time. To be a sudden death, symptoms can appear no more than 60 minutes before the death. Most sudden deaths are due to heart diseases, especially sudden cardiac death. Some sudden deaths are caused by epilepsy or other conditions. A typical classification subdivides sudden deaths into arrhythmic, circulatory, and non-cardiac deaths. However, it is sometimes difficult to properly classify any given death, as some neurological diseases may produce symptoms of cardiac arrhythmia.

Causes
The following are the most common diseases for sudden unexpected death.
 * 1) Myocardial infarction and other heart problems
 * 2) Brochial asthma
 * 3) Brain stroke
 * 4) Epilepsy
 * 5) Acute renal failure

The most common causes depend upon the age and health of the affected person. In infants, the most common cause of sudden death is sudden infant death syndrome. In young athletes, the most common cardiac cause is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Syndromes
At least twelve sudden death syndromes have been reported:
 * sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP)
 * sudden death in middle aged men
 * sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS)
 * sudden death from fright
 * sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
 * sudden death in young athletes
 * sudden death associated with drug use
 * sudden cardiac death
 * sudden death during sedative drug (including alcohol) withdrawal
 * sudden death during delirium
 * sudden death from stroke (including subarachnoid hemorrhage)
 * sudden death from head injury

In infants
A cause for sudden unexpected infant deaths is sometimes identified. These include:
 * infections, such as bronchopneumonia and viral myocarditis
 * unsuspected congenital abnormalities, such as congenital aortic stenosis
 * genetic defects, such as long QT syndrome
 * metabolic defects, such as fatty acid oxidation disorders

In animals
In veterinary medicine, sudden death may include animals that die within 12 to 24 hours of showing the first obvious signs of a disease. This is partly due to the limited opportunities, as a farmer or rancher may only check on a herd once or twice a day.

In large animals, such as horses and cows, infectious, parasitic, metabolic, nutritional, physical, cardiovascular, toxic and other causes may be responsible for the death. Occasionally, an apparent sudden death in an animal may be an unnatural death, usually poisoning, as part of an insurance fraud scheme or other criminal activity.