Did you watch TV3 last night? The brave Poupouare whanau talk about their heartache of losing their son Elliott, at just 17 years of age.
Dr Jon Skinner, our clinical lead, is also talking about sudden cardiac death and our goal to make genetic testing compulsory in young people, when no cause of death is found at autopsy.
This coincides with the very exciting news of our latest research on sudden cardiac death in Australia and NZ which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, only last week.
We collected information on all cases of sudden cardiac death among children and young adults from 2010 through 2012, in cases where no cause of death was found at autopsy. We then performed genetic testing on stored DNA and found a clinically relevant cardiac gene mutation in 27% of cases. This was a trans Tasman effort which will hopefully help us learn more, and in turn, PREVENT sudden cardiac death in the young.
Please CLICK ON THIS LINK TO WATCH