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It has been reported that cardiological screening and genetic evaluation in relatives of families with sudden unexplained death syndrome and unexplained cardiac arrest (UCA) may uncover a heritable etiology in a significant proportion of families.

To evaluate the yield of a comprehensive evaluation protocol of a large unselected cohort of consecutive families with autopsy-negative sudden unexplained death syndrome (termed sudden arrhythmic death syndrome [SADS]) and UCA.

We studied (1) 109 consecutive families (411 relatives) referred with 1 or more sudden deaths in the family and (2) 52 consecutive probands with UCA (91 relatives) referred by cardiologists between January 2007 and December 2012. A comprehensive cardiological screening was performed followed by targeted genetic evaluation if a clinical phenotype was proven or suspected. Diagnosis was made by a …