In 2009 a Pediatrics study said Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was one of the leading causes of post neonatal newborn death for babies after one month of age. The research found that a large amount of SIDS deaths occur in babies who are between 2 and 4 months old.
The most common cause of death for children under the age of 1 is SIDS. It is responsible for nearly 9% of all infant death, and takes place mainly in the first 6 months of life. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome hardly ever occurs before 1 month of age or after 6 months.
About 2,600 newborns in the United States die each year from SIDS. 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 1,410 live births. Long years of investigation have established factors that raise the risk of SIDS-such as letting infants snooze on their stomachs-but no ultimate answers as to what causes the condition. Even with years of thorough investigation, the causes of SIDS remain unknown.
What the Latest Research Can Tell Us
Babies under the age of one year are more likely to die of SIDS. Normally, a SIDS death happens when a quietly sleeping newborn simply never wakes up. Infants may suffer episodes termed apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). These are clinical events in which young newborns may face sudden changes in breathing, color, or muscle tone. Babies have died as a result of SIDS at all times of the day and night, in cribs, bassinets, car seats, strollers, even in a parent’s devoted arms. While SIDS used to be referred to more frequently as crib death, that does not indicate that it only occurred in cribs, that simply tended to be the place most dead babies were found.
To complicate matters even more, doctors and police might be uninformed of a family’s past, or they may be blinded by sympathy for the inconsolable parents. A tragic account is of Marybeth Tinning of Schenectady, New York, who won only sympathy as, one by one, her nine youngsters died of SIDS and other vague natural causes between 1972 and 1985. Doctors still don’t understand what causes this condition. In actuality, the judgment of SIDS is made only after all other possible explanations are ruled out.
Newborns with suspected cases of SIDS should have an autopsy done by a forensic pathologist who has specialized training in cause-of-death determinations, and the autopsy should include histological and toxicological examinations. The quality and interpretation of postmortem information varies, in part, because some investigative certifier systems do not have a written procedure which lists the criteria to be used to establish SIDS. Newborns of all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups are potentially vulnerable, although with varying risk. Infants at peak risk of SIDS include: pre-term newborns, especially those weighing less than 2.3 pounds or 1,000 gm; babies who had intrauterine growth restriction; babies born to mothers with little or no prenatal care or under 20 years of age; males; and African Americans and Native Americans. Babies who sleep on their stomachs and sides have a higher rate of SIDS than newborns who sleep on their backs.
Newborns who die from SIDS tend to have elevated concentrations of nicotine and cotinine (a biological marker for secondhand smoke contact) in their lungs than those who die from other causes. Newborns that come into contact with secondhand smoke after birth are too at a greater risk of SIDS.
Babies whose mothers smoked through pregnancy were born with smaller airways. This causes at risk breathing complications following birth. We also know that more babies die of SIDS whose mothers smoked during and after pregnancy. Newborns make a ton of phlegm and have a ton 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 will reduce the quantity of oxygen the fetus gets. Cigarette taxes and laws regulating inside smoking are recognized to be strong predictors of smoking behaviors among all adults and pregnant women. If smoking is actually a causal determinant of SIDS, then policies that lower smoking ought to have the added benefit of dropping SIDS cases.
The predicament with defining smoking as a connecting determinant of SIDS is clear: infants never exposed to cigarette smoke nonetheless die of SIDS. To make matters worse, studies reveal that babies which are breast fed, which have had fantastic prenatal care, who were full term as well as of normal birth weight, who have parents that have never abused drugs, in short, that have no known risk factors, still die from SIDS. Regardless of these problems, we do know that mothers who 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.
Statistics show that SIDS occurs most often in the winter months, and it affects more boys than girls. The infant has at times had a mild respiratory infection and may well not have been feeding well in the previous months. Statistics confirm that African-American and Native-American babies are more likely to be at risk.
A new research report released by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) discovered over half of SIDS cases happened while the baby was co-sleeping with an adult or another child. Of those deaths, many happened in a potentially dangerous environment, such as on a bed or on a couch together with a person who had recently used drugs or alcohol.
Some studies have revealed that an irregularity on the brain stem which controls respiratory functions was responsible for the fatality, however this premise does not have enough medical support at this time. Although extremely rare, anaphylaxis as a result of any cause — such as a food, drug, or environmental allergen — can lead to sudden, unexpected death. With the basis of a well-documented instance of fatal anaphylactic shock in twin infants that occurred after each was given a second dose of diphtheria toxoid and whole-cell pertussis vaccine (DwP), the commission concluded that the evidence favors acceptance of a relationship between this vaccine and infant death due to anaphylaxis.
The good news update is that the incidence of SIDS is on the drop in the United States and other countries. That drop has been accomplished largely because of public education campaigns informing parents regarding several important factors linked with an increased risk of SIDS. Though they have recommended methods, there is no sure fire approach to preventing SIDS from taking place.
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