[Significance of chronic ischemic heart disease and its various forms for sudden death].

Our results confirm that chronic-ischemic heart disease is the most important cause of different forms of acute death. This is observed more often in men than in women. The average age of the deceased is especially low in cases of instantaneous death. The instantaneous death concerns males twice as often as females. In all age groups until the 8th decade, all kinds of acute death predominate in men. Acute myocardial infarction in cases of acute death is more frequent in women than in men. In nearly 4/5 of all cases we found a stenosing atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries whose rate is somewhat higher in males than in females. The greater part of all cases with acute death is characterized by signs of fresh or old disturbances of the coronary circulation. Only in 15% of all cases, we found no morphologic changes in the myocardium. This finding was especially often observed in cases of sudden death. To our opinion, in many cases the morphologic findings are not sufficient to explain the cause of acute death. Additional factors must also be taken into consideration.