Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Health Article

Definition

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexplained death without warning of an apparently healthy infant, usually during sleep.

Description

Also known as crib death, SIDS has baffled physicians and parents for years. In the 1990s, advances have been made in preventing the occurrence of SIDS, which killed more than 4, 800 babies in 1992 and 3, 279 infants in 1995. Education programs aimed at encouraging parents and caregivers to place babies on their backs and sides when putting them to bed have helped contribute to a lower mortality rate from SIDS.

In the United States, SIDS strikes one or two infants in every thousand, making it the leading cause of death in newborns. It accounts for about 10% of deaths occurring during the first year of life. SIDS most commonly affects babies between the ages of two months and six months; it almost never strikes infants younger than two weeks of age or older than eight months. Most SIDS deaths occur between midnight and 8 A.M.

Risk factors for SIDS

The exact causes of SIDS are still unknown, although studies have shown that many of the infants had recently been under a doctor's care for a cold or other illness of the upper respiratory tract. Most SIDS deaths occur during the winter and early spring, which are the peak times for respiratory infections. The most common risk factors for SIDS include:

• sleeping on the stomach (in the prone position)
• mother who smokes during pregnancy; smokers are as much as three times more likely than nonsmokers to have a SIDS baby
• the presence of passive smoke in the household
• male sex. The male/female ratio in SIDS deaths is 3:2
• belonging to an economically deprived or minority family
• mother under 20 years of age at pregnancy
• mother who abuses drugs
• mother with little or no prenatal care
• prematurity or low weight at birth
• family history of SIDS

Most of these risk factors are associated with significantly higher rates of SIDS; however, none of them are exact enough to be useful in predicting which specific children may die from SIDS.