Now that I’m done the program for my friend’s funeral, the task has been given to me to give a brief explanation of his very sudden death.
Here’s what I know. He suffered from restrictive cardiomyopathy. The pathologist said it was a hereditary defect.
My first question is what sort of hereditary defect could have caused the stiffening of the heart muscles?
Secondly, the circumstances of his death matched those of sudden cardiac death from ventricular fribullation. I understand this, and my dad (an M.D. himself) said that it was probably a re-entry event that caused it. In other words, I know the most probable direct cause of his death.
Unfortunately, I don’t understand how the cardiomyopathy and the re-entry event connect. How could the stiffened heart muscles have disrupted the electrical signals in his heart?
Other important information: he was twenty-two, scrawny but middling-athletic (he biked and was on a campus rec soccer team), ate unhealthily, and led an unstressed life.