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What Parents Can Do About Sids
A Pediatrics report published in 2009 sited Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as one of the main causes of post neonatal infant death for babies after one month of age. The study found that nearly all SIDS deaths take place in babies that are between 2 and 4 months old.
The number one killer of children under the age of 1 is SIDS. It makes up about 9% of all infant death, and takes place generally in the first 6 months of life. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome seldom occurs before 1 month of age or after 6 months.
In the United States, SIDS is responsible for killing about 2,550 babies every year. In Canada, SIDS is the leading cause of death for infants more than four weeks old, accounting for about one infant death out of every 1,390 live births. Over 30 years of study have established factors that raise the risk of SIDS-like letting infants sleep on their stomachs-but no definitive answers as to what causes the condition. In spite of years of intensive research, the causes of SIDS remain unknown.
What Researchers Do Know
Babies under the age of one year are more prone to SIDS. By and large, a SIDS death occurs when a quietly sleeping newborn just never wakes up. Infants could be subjected to episodes termed apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). These are clinical events in which young infants can face abrupt changes in breathing, color, or muscle tone. Newborns have died from SIDS at all times of the day and night, in cribs, bassinets, car seats, strollers, even in a parent’s affectionate arms. Although SIDS used to be referred to more frequently as crib death, that does not mean that it only occurred in cribs, that simply tended to be where most dead newborns were found.
To further complicate matters, doctors and law enforcement may well be uninformed of a family’s past, or they may be blinded by sympathy for the anguished parents. A sad story is of Marybeth Tinning of Schenectady, New York, who won only compassion as, one by one, her nine babies died of SIDS and other unclear natural causes between 1972 and 1985. Doctors still do not understand what causes this condition. In fact, the diagnosis of SIDS is made only after all other possible explanations are ruled out.
Newborns with supposed cases of SIDS ought to have an autopsy performed by a forensic pathologist who has expert training in cause-of-death determinations, and the autopsy should include histological and toxicological examinations. The quality and analysis of postmortem information varies, in part, because a lot of investigative certifier systems do not have a written protocol that specifies the criteria to be used to diagnose SIDS. Babies of all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups are potentially susceptible, though with varying probability. Babies at greatest risk of SIDS include: pre-term newborns, especially those weighing less than 2.3 pounds or 1,000 gm; infants who had intrauterine growth restriction; infants born to mothers with little or no prenatal care or less than 20 years old; males; and African Americans and Native Americans. Infants who sleep on their stomachs and sides have a higher rate of SIDS than babies who sleep on their backs.
Infants who die from SIDS are inclined to have higher concentrations of nicotine and cotinine (a biological marker for secondhand smoke exposure) in their lungs than those who die from other causes. Infants exposed to secondhand smoke after birth are also at a greater risk of SIDS.
Babies whose mothers smoked throughout pregnancy were born with smaller airways. That causes at risk breathing troubles subsequent to birth. We also know that more newborns die of SIDS whose mothers smoked throughout and after pregnancy. Newborns produce a lot of phlegm and have a lot of secretions still making there passageway out of their lungs. The lungs are irritated by smoke which causes even more phlegm to be produced. Cigarette smoking during pregnancy can diminish the amount of oxygen the fetus gets. Cigarette taxes and laws regulating inside smoking are known to be powerful predictors of smoking behaviors amongst all adults and expecting women. If smoking is in fact a causal determinant of SIDS, then policies which lower smoking ought to have the additional advantage of dropping SIDS cases.
The predicament in branding smoking as a connecting determinant of SIDS is clear: newborns not exposed to cigarette smoke nevertheless die of SIDS. To make matters worse, studies reveal that newborns that are breast fed, who have had great prenatal care, who were full term as well as of normal birth weight, who have parents which have not used drugs, to the point, that have no known risk factors, nevertheless die from SIDS. Regardless of these problems, we do know that mothers that smoke throughout pregnancy are three times more likely to have a SIDS baby and contact with passive smoke subsequent to pregnancy doubles a baby’s risk of SIDS.
Data shows that SIDS happens mainly during the winter months, and boys are more affected than girls. The newborn has sometimes had a mild respiratory infection and may not have been feeding well in the preceding weeks. Statistics confirm that African-American and Native-American babies are more likely to be at risk.
A recent study released by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found over half of SIDS cases happened while the baby was co-sleeping along with an adult or another youngster. Of those deaths, many happened in a potentially dangerous situation, such as on a bed or on a sofa with a person which had just used drugs or alcohol.
A number of studies have revealed that an defect on the brain stem that controls respiratory processes was responsible for the death, however this premise does not have enough medical research to support it at this time. Although very rare, anaphylaxis as a result of any cause — such as a food, drug, or environmental allergen — can lead to abrupt, unexpected death. With the basis of a well-documented instance of deadly anaphylactic shock in twin infants that occurred after each got a second dose of diphtheria toxoid and whole-cell pertussis vaccine (DwP), the commission concluded that the evidence favors acceptance of a linkage between this vaccine and infant death as a result of anaphylaxis.
The good news is that the rate of SIDS is on the decline in the United States and other countries. This decline has been achieved mainly through public education campaigns educating parents concerning several important factors linked with an increased risk of SIDS. Although they have recommended methods, there is no absolute method to preventing SIDS from happening.
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