One in nine men and one in 30 women will die from a sudden heart attack before they reach the age of 70, new research has warned.
Sudden cardiac death claims thousands of lives each year, and is most likely to strike people with no prior symptoms and no history of cardiovascular disease, the findings show.
The study represents the first to offer a lifetime risk estimate for the condition.
Dr Donald Lloyd-Jones, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and senior author of the study, said his team's research suggests regular screening should be offered to try and pick up those at risk.
'These numbers should raise a red flag,' he said.
'We often screen for conditions that are less common and much less deadly than sudden cardiac death.
'For instance, the lifetime risk for colon cancer is about one in 21, and for this reason everyone over the age of 50 is told to have a colonoscopy.
'But by comparison the lifetime risk of sudden cardiac death for men is one in nine, and yet we're not really screening it.'
In the study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, Dr Lloyd-Jones and his team examined data of more than 5,200 men and women aged 28 to 62 who were free of cardiovascular disease.
The researchers focused on the blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and diabetes, calculating an estimation for the risk of sudden cardiac death
