SCIENCE: Sudden Cardiac Death in College Athletes.

A carefully done paper presented at the recent AHA meeting and published in Circulation found no increase in sudden cardiac death in NCAA athletes. In fact, the authors reported a decline in sudden cardiac death during the years 2021-2022.

This was a 20-year survey in which the authors used 4 independent databases to document the incidence and causes of sudden cardiac death in NCAA athletes.

They found 143 cases of sudden cardiac death over the 20 years. The overall incidence of SCD was 1:63,682 athlete-years, which is inline with published incidence rates from other studies.

Here are the plots of incidence rates over time. You can see a clear decline in the rates over the years. The last two years are the lowest. (Red line.) . . .

The authors acknowledge limitations. The main one I think is the absence of data on resuscitated arrests. This is important because of the positive trend of increased availability of automatic external defibrillators or AEDs. Namely, it’s possible that there was an increase in cardiac arrests, but not cardiac death—due to better interventions. (In fact, the lower incidence of sudden death in recent years is likely to be due to AEDs).

AEDs should be everywhere.

Plus: “Yet the lack of any signal of increased sudden cardiac death among NCAA athletes is reassuring. It argues against the idea that mRNA vaccines was causing excess cardiac deaths in young athletes. This doesn’t mean mandating the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine in some of the lowest risk groups was a wise decision. In my opinion, the downplay of the myocarditis signal from the vaccine as well as the mandates shredded public trust. It’s a mistake I hope medical leaders learn from. Yet this study again confirms that anecdotes don’t always sum to evidence.”

Nope. Anecdotes are a reason to look into things. They raise questions, they don’t answer them.