Abstract: Sudden cardiac death （SCD） refers to sudden stop of breath and heartbeat and death within one hour caused by underlying cardiac diseases. Clinical manifestation of inherited arrhythmia is lethal arrhythmia without gross cardiac lesions, which can lead to SCD. The autopsy and pathological examination are difficult to identify the cause of death. Fatal mechanism of inherited arrhythmia is the change in the genes encoding for cardiac ion channel protein, which causes the dysfunctions of cardiac electrical activity. It is very important to detect genetic mutation by the technique of molecular biology in negative autopsy. This review presents the latest research on the relation between SCD and inherited arrhythmia, and the application of molecular autopsy used in identifying SCD due to inherited arrhythmia and its candidate gene.

Key words: forensic pathology, death, sudden, cardiac, review[publication type], arrhythmia, molecular autopsy