Abstract
A 22-year-old healthy man developed cardiac arrest when playing basketball. Despite of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he died in our hospital on the 2nd day. A autopsy revealed aberrant right coronary artery as the cause of death. This present had 2 episodes of syncope during drinking and exercise before. Sudden death of young athletes during exercise can be caused by aberrant right coronary artery from the left sinus of Valsalva. However, this disease is rarely diagnosed before cardiac arrest, though just 30% of such case has been reported to have episodes of syncope only during exercise. Few consult physicians because they have no symptoms after exercise. Additionally, if they had medical examinations, there is usually no significant finding on routine examination such as an electrocardiogram and echocardiograms at rest. Therefore, it is difficult to diagnose aberrant coronary artery before a major episode. Syncope is a relatively common symptom, however, in order to prevent sudden death due to this disease, we should more carefully examine young athletes with syncope, especially during exercise. We should aggressively consider using multi-slice computed tomography (CT) for the prevention of sudden death caused by this disease.
