Cardiac arrhythmias and SUDEP--Commentary on Hindocha et al.

Cooper PN (2008) Cardiac arrhythmias and SUDEP – Commentary on Hindocha et al.. Epilepsia 49:2 366–7.

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Comments and Context

• Comment on Hindocha et al. Cites Bird et al. and So et al. to argue that central cardiorespiratory depression is the most likely cause of SUDEP and noting that autopsy studies have failed to find consistent structural abnormalities with the heart (see also annotation at Natelson et al. The author discusses the episodes of bradycardia often seen in epilepsy patients (Rugg-Gunn et al., 2004; Britton et al., 2006), but notes that such episodes are at most rarely attributable to monogenic channelopathies such as those reported by Hindocha et al.