Men: At 40, risk of cardiac death is 1 in 8

UNDATED - Here's a startling statistic for you: Men at age 40 have a 1 in 8 chance of dying of a sudden cardiac death over the rest of their lives.

The risk for women is 1 in 24.

Some 300,000 Americans every year suffer sudden cardiac death, but the lifetime risks of sudden cardiac deaths haven't been estimated before.

Sudden cardiac death is when a person dies within an hour of the onset of the symptoms. Heart attacks are the most common cause. Valve disease, infections and heart-beat irregularities can end in sudden cardiac death.

The risk estimates come from data compiled by Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist at Northwestern University. The data included three community based studies of heart disease over a half-century.

The odds of a 40-year-old man suffering coronary heart disease during his lifetime are 1 in 2. The odds of a stroke are 1 in 5. The odds of lung cancer are 1 in 12.

By comparison, the odds are 1 in 3 for a woman for coronary heart disease, 1 in 5 for a stroke and 1 in 17 of lung cancer.

The causes for sudden cardiac death are largely preventable. Preventive measures include healthful eating, regular exercise and taking cholesterol and blood pressure medicines when necessary.

"As you achieve an increasing age, that is if you start at 50 or 60 or 70 or 80, your remaining risk of having sudden death is going down. So it's only approximately 5 percent if you are a man who reached age 80 and only approximately 2 percent for a woman who has reached age 80," Lloyd-Jones told the American Heart Association's annual meeting Sunday.

He says at age 80 your risk is going down because there are fewer people that age.

"Once you reach age 80, there are many things that are competing to kill us at that point," he says.

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The video below is from the American Heart Association's annual meeting. The presentation from Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones starts almost 16 minutes into the presentation.

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