A Routine ECG Can Now Predict Sudden Cardiac Death: Better…

A Routine ECG Can Now Predict Sudden Cardiac Death: Better Than LVEF Every cardiologist carries the same frustration. A patient dies suddenly. You look back at their records. Normal ejection fraction. No obvious red flags. Nothing that would have changed your decision. Sudden cardiac death remains one of medicine's most persistent blind spots. The best predictive tool we have, left ventricular ejection fraction, misses the majority of patients who go on to die suddenly. A study published in Nature this week may change that. The team trained a deep learning model on every ECG performed in an entire Swedish region over six years, linked directly to death certificates. The result is a model that identifies a high-risk group with a 7% annual rate of sudden cardiac death. For context — that is higher than the annual rate in patients with reduced LVEF, which sits at 4.6%. The model's high-risk group