Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

andyman

First victim was Marc Vivian Foe of Cameroon in the Confederations cup,Then it was Milkos Feher of Benfica.Then SADS came to Ireland with the deaths of Tyrone captain Cormac McAnalan,John McCall and most recently Ken Byrne of Kilkenny.

The point of this thread is how did certain talents just die all of a sudden.I mean you dont see it happening to people who dont play sports but you see it happening to people with amazing talent.

Anyone else have any veiws on this.

sceptre

andyman wrote:

I mean you dont see it happening to people who dont play sports but you see it happening to people with amazing talent.

Of course you see it happening to people who don't play sports or have amazing talent - the current estimate is that 8 people a week die of it just in the UK. And SADS isn't a disease that travels as you know, it's a term used (coined to tie in with SIDS) to refer to a range of things that cause sudden death, particularly among young adults. The name was proposed by Tim Bowker of the British Heart Foundation - they found that when SIDS was first coined for sudden infant death syndrome that it became easier to collate the deaths and have a rough idea of how many people it was happening to. Otherwise coroners wrote down "unexplained" or an equivalent - far too vague and wide a term for statistical analysis.

It happens to far more people than people who throw javelins or kick a ball while people are watching. And it's been happening for years (Marc Vivian Foe is nowhere near to being the first victim). You just haven't noticed because no-one bothered pointing it out till recently.

Sparks

I thought SADS did refer to a specific "disease", or more accurately, cause of death - that caused by a sharp blow to the chest at a set point in the heartbeat (either the start or the end of the T-wave, I can't remember which). But it's supposed to be more of a freak accident than a serious threat.

Flukey

These people die from different things. We've had several this year in Ireland alone, with Cormac McAnallen being the most well know. We had one in Cork, just last weekend, when a young hurler died. It is not an uncommon occurence, unfortunately.