Around 20,000 Australians suffer from sudden cardiac arrests every year, but research from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute hopes to identify people genetically at risk.
Queensland researchers have developed a new electrical screening test to pinpoint risky mutations that could lead to sudden death
His voice falters and his eyes well with tears when he recalls that night, but in the moment he remained calm. Tim Prowse with the couple's eldest daughter Clementine who was a baby when her father saved her mother's life.Sudden cardiac arrests happen when the electrical activity in the heart stops and the organ can't pump blood around the body, causing death within 10 minutes.
Victoria's mother Edwina Macarthur-Stanham didn't realise how precarious her daughter's condition was until she arrived at the hospital and was quickly ushered in to see Tim. The couple went ahead with their wedding just weeks after Mrs Macarthur-Stanham's sudden cardiac arrest.Professor Jamie Vandenberg is a leading cardiac genetic researcher and co-deputy director at Sydney's Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
"The problem with these genetic mutations is that they're often silent, so the patients themselves don't know and it's only when the first member of the family has a major event that we then find out." "And in the particular syndrome that we're looking at, called Long QT syndrome, we can give clinicians greater confidence that they've identified the specific cause, so they can then screen the rest of the family to see who else is at risk."Mrs Macarthur-Stanham was diagnosed with the condition in the wake of her cardiac arrest and screening showed her mother Edwina and youngest daughter, four-month-old Indigo, also have it.
"In the long term we've got the opportunity to have characterised every possible variant in this ion channel gene and upload that to a publicly available database.
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