Sudden Unexpected Death in Alcohol Misuse (SUDAM) is an under-recognized entity that may account for a significant number of misattributed deaths.
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SUDAM may be under-recognized in sudden deaths; leaves open its true prevalence and requires prospective validation before clinical consideration.
Sudden arrhythmic cardiac death can occur in chronic misusers of alcohol. The only findings at post mortem are fatty liver and a negative or low blood alcohol. This is an under-recognized entity. Coroner's post mortems in a typical UK city were studied. Seven out of 1,292 (0.5%) post mortems were deemed to have died of alcohol associated arrhythmic death. Applying this study to the UK as a whole, alcohol related arrhythmic death or as we have termed it SUDAM (Sudden Unexpected Death in Alcohol Misuse) probably accounts for around 1,000 deaths, many of which are misattributed to other causes.
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Templeton et al. (2009) studied this question.
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