[chispamed]

Last year med student here, sudden cardiac arrest commonly occur in young people. Apart from infectious myocarditis which you might notice as fatigue and reduced performance after you’ve suffered a respiratory infection, hypertrophic myocardiopathy and especially hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy is often hereditary and can be mortal without showing prior symptoms. That’s why after a patient’s death you usually examine their broader family if HOCM was the cause as it can be detected via ultrasound and treated pharmacologically or interventionally (injecting alcohol in the obstructive parts or implanting a defibrillator).

[JshWright]

> Last year med student here, sudden cardiac arrest commonly occur in young people.

I think you mean that in the population of people who experience Sudden Cardiac Arrest/Death, many of them are young people. SCD is definitely not "common".

[chispamed]

Yes, sorry, should have clarified that. Although generally speaking HCM/HOCM is not a rare disease either and definitely not a negligible cause of non-traumatic mortality cause in younger people.

[FeepingCreature]

I'm adopted. Can I find out if I'm at risk from a DNA mapping service like 23andme?

[chispamed]

Prevalence is 200 per 100k so you’re almost certainly not affected. If you want to be sure a routine ECG and a trans thoracic ultrasound usually is sufficient to diagnose / exclude cardiac myopathy. 23andme doesn’t even look at the whole genome, they just look for common disease associated polymorphisms. No way of telling if you have a mutation that’s not in their database and even if you have a mutation it could be deactivated epigenetically or other factors could lead to you not suffering the disease.

[alpaca128]

> it can be detected via ultrasound and treated pharmacologically or interventionally

To me that sounds like a more reliable way to find out.