Predictability of Sudden Cardiac Death

The observation made by Baum and associates1 and later confirmed by others,2 that in most instances sudden cardiac death is neither triggered by nor associated with acute myocardial infarction, defined a need to develop indexes predictive of sudden cardiac death. Identification of the sudden-death syndrome as an entity that is most commonly related to extensive coronary-artery disease and severe ventricular dysfunction3 rather than to acute myocardial infarction suggested a potential role for prophylactic antiarrhythmic therapy4 as well as the need for predictive clinical indexes.In 1977, the Journal published an article by Ruberman et al.,5 about which one of us . . .