Methods Taegu-Kyungpook is a 19,908 km2 region of Korea with a population of 5,325,000,
according to the 1998 census. Although Korean law does not mandate postmortem
examination following sudden death, in cases of unwitnessed or sudden unexplained death,
especially in young and previously healthy individuals, an autopsy is usually conducted.
Because all autopsies in this region are performed by pathologists in the Department of
Forensic Medicine, Kyungpook National University, we had the opportunity to estimate the …

I read with great interest the recently published study by Cho et al1 in which they report 38
sudden cardiac deaths (SCD)(arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, ARVC, in
42%) in young subjects from Taegu-Kyungpook during a 2-year period. Interestingly, the
percentage of cases of ARVC is higher than in previously published reports. Maron et al
reported that of 134 athletes (screening results for approximately 10 years) who died of a
variety of cardiovascular causes, 48 (36%) had probable or definite evidence of hypertrophic …