ABSTRACT
Young, male, Southeast Asian immigrants living in the United States have a high incidence of unexplained, sudden, nocturnal death. We report the cases of three patients, two Laotians and one Filipino, who were resuscitated and subsequently studied extensively. Each patient was having ventricular fibrillation when first examined by paramedics outside the hospital, and episodes of fibrillation recurred in the early hospital course. Clinical evaluation found no significant coronary atherosclerosis or structural cardiac disease. One patient is asymptomatic after 2 years; the second patient died suddenly at 4 months; and the third is asymptomatic but had inducible ventricular tachycardia on electrophysiologic testing 6 months after resuscitation. The mechanism of sudden death in young Southeast Asian men appears to be ventricular fibrillation. The cause of the arrhythmia is unclear, although in our patients the arrhythmia was not an isolated event; underlying predispositions to further cardiac arrest persisted.
Subject(s)
Death, Sudden/etiology , Heart Arrest/etiology , Ventricular Fibrillation/complications , Adult , Electrocardiography , Heart Arrest/physiopathology , Humans , Laos/ethnology , Male , Philippines/ethnology , United States , Ventricular Fibrillation/physiopathologySubject(s)
Health Facilities , Physician-Patient Relations , Physicians' Offices , Adult , Arteriosclerosis/etiology , Arteriosclerosis/prevention & control , Coronary Disease/economics , Coronary Disease/etiology , Coronary Disease/prevention & control , Humans , Patient Education as Topic , Physician's Role , RiskABSTRACT
The predictive validity of the new Medical College Admission Test as it relates to end-of-quarter examinations in anatomy, histology, physiology, biochemistry, and "ages of man" is presented. It is recognized that the maximum predictive power is attenuated by the reliability of the criterion variables. To determine the value of attempting to increase the reliability in the criteria, the authors corrected the validity coefficients for attenutation. Regression analyses were also undertaken to examine the extent to which the new MCAT subtests can predict scores on end-of-quarter examinations. Results indicate that the Science Knowledge assessment areas of chemistry and physics and the Science Problems subtest were the most useful in predicting student performance, followed by the Skills Analysis: Quantitative and Skills Analysis: Reading subtests and the biology area of the Science Knowledge subtest.
