A method and apparatus for the quantitative determination of an individual's risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD) is described. Risk stratification is accomplished (and may have a sensitivity and specificity of greater than about 90%) by determining the presence in any individual being tested for SCD risk of sequences identified herein to correlate quantitatively with SCD risk. Both the number of such sequences present and their alignment scores (similarity) with the SCD risk sequence ensemble are used to calculate quantitative SCD risk.
