Sudden Cardiac Death: Coronary Artery Spontaneous Dissection

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is a rare pathology that can result in acute coronary syndrome and sudden cardiac death. The actual incidence is thought to be higher as majority of cases is diagnosed at autopsy. In this study, it is aimed to present a case of spontaneous coronary artery dissection that result in sudden death. A 53year old man complaining of headache was brought to emergency department but he was dead on arrival to hospital. Coronary dissection was noticed at right coronary artery and also a hematoma with a false channel lumen at his autopsy. Spontaneous coronary artery dissection, described as the dissection between the layers of media and adventitia in the coronary artery wall, has histopathological characteristics of subadventitial dissection, hematoma formation in the cross-section of the coronary artery. SCAD cases commonly appear as sudden death and 70-75% of these cases are diagnosed in postmortem examinations.