Psychiatric disorders raise risk of sudden cardiac death across all age groups: study
Patients with schizophrenia have the highest risk but all should be monitored closely, researchers say.
Young people with schizophrenia have 4.5 times the risk of sudden cardiac death compared with the general population, a study shows.
Danish researchers drawing on nationwide data also found that people with bipolar disorder had a threefold increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD), and those with depressive disorders had double the risk.
The findings underlined the importance of intensively monitoring psychiatric patients with a focus on cardiometabolic factors and regular ECGs, the researchers said.
“Life expectancy for an 18-year-old with a psychiatric disorder is estimated to be 10 years shorter in comparison with those without this disorder,” the cardiologist and psychiatrist researchers wrote in the journal Heart.
