Before American Heart Month ends, experts want to bring awareness to the most common genetic heart condition in the country, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
It affects about one in 500 people in the United States. It causes a heart muscle to thicken, making it harder to pump blood.
"The thick heart muscle itself create rhythm issues, so these patients' heart can go out of rhythm into some deadly heart rhythms sometimes and can cause sudden cardiac death," cardiologist Dr. Said Alsidawi said.
Only a fraction of people with this condition are actually diagnosed. Symptoms can include shortness of breath, chest pain, lightheadedness, dizziness, or passing out, especially during exercise of other exertion. But in many cases, there are no signs until a sudden cardiac arrest.