MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sumeet S. Chugh MD Price Professor and Associate Director, Smidt Heart Institute Medical Director, Heart Rhythm Center Director, Center for Cardiac Arrest Prevention Director, Division of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Dept of Medicine Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: For a variety of reasons, sudden cardiac arrest during nighttime hours is the most perplexing and challenging form of this problem and needs to be investigated in detail. Patients are in a resting state, with decreased metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, and in the absence of daytime triggers, presumably at the lowest likelihood of dying suddenly. The event can often go unrecognized, even by others sleeping in close proximity. Finally, survival from cardiac arrest at night is significantly lower compared to the daytime. There are no community-based studies out there. Small studies of rare heart disease conditions report that men are more likely to suffer this affliction but the reality is that there were not enough women in those studies to do justice to sex-specific analyses. (more…)