According to a Pediatrics study published in 2009, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is one of the primary causes of post neonatal infant death for babies following one month of age. The study discovered that a large amount of SIDS deaths take place in newborns that are between 2 and 4 months old.
SIDS is the most common cause of death for children under the age of 1. It is blamed for about 9% of all newborn death, and happens mainly in the first 6 months of life. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome hardly ever happens before 1 month of age or after 6 months.
SIDS is blamed for killing about 2,490 babies each year in the United States. In Canada, SIDS is the leading cause of death for newborns over four weeks old, making up about one infant death out of every 1,410 live births. Years and years of research have established factors that increase 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 rigorous study, the causes of SIDS remain unidentified.
What Researchers Do Know
Infants less than one year are more likely to die of SIDS. By and large, a SIDS death occurs when a peacefully sleeping newborn just never wakes up. Newborns might experience episodes termed apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). These are clinical events in which young babies can go through abrupt changes in breathing, color, or muscle tone. Infants have died from SIDS at all times of the day and night, in car seats, strollers, cribs, bassinets, even in a parent’s affectionate arms. Though SIDS used to be referred to more commonly as crib death, that does not suggest that it only happened in cribs, that just tended to be where most dead newborns were found.
To add even greater complexity to the matter, doctors and police may well be unaware of a family’s history, or they may be blinded by compassion for the grieving parents. A sad story is of Marybeth Tinning of Schenectady, New York, who won only compassion as, one by one, her nine youngsters died of SIDS and other vague natural causes between 1972 and 1985. Doctors still do not know what causes this condition. In fact, the diagnosis of SIDS is made simply after all other possible explanations are ruled out.
Infants with suspected cases of SIDS ought to have an autopsy done by a forensic pathologist who has specific 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 a lot of investigative certifier systems do not have a written set of rules which lists the criteria to be used to diagnose SIDS. Newborns of all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups are potentially vulnerable, though with varying probability. Newborns at maximum SIDS risk include: pre-term infants, especially those weighing less than 2.3 pounds or 1,000 gm; newborns who had intrauterine growth restriction; babies born to mothers with little or no prenatal care or under the age of 20 years; males; and African Americans and Native Americans. Newborns who sleep on their stomachs and sides have a higher rate of SIDS than infants who sleep on their backs.
Newborns who die from SIDS are inclined to have higher concentrations of nicotine and cotinine (a biological marker for secondhand smoke contact) in their lungs than those who die from other causes. Babies that come into contact with secondhand smoke after birth are also at a higher risk of SIDS.
Infants whose mothers smoked through pregnancy were born with smaller airways. That causes at risk breathing troubles after birth. We also know that more infants die of SIDS whose mothers smoked throughout and after pregnancy. Infants create a huge amount of phlegm and have a huge amount of secretions still making its way out of their lungs. The lungs are irritated by smoke which causes even more phlegm to be produced. Cigarette smoking in pregnancy will reduce the quantity of oxygen the fetus gets. Cigarette taxes and laws regulating inside smoking are well-known to be powerful predictors of smoking behaviors amongst all adults and expecting women. If smoking is truly a contributory determinant of SIDS, then policies which lower smoking ought to have the additional benefit of reducing SIDS cases.
The predicament with branding smoking as a underlying determinant of SIDS is clear: newborns never exposed to cigarette smoke nevertheless die of SIDS. To make things worse, studies show that infants who are breast fed, that have had wonderful prenatal care, that were full term and of normal birth weight, that have parents who have not used drugs, in short, who have no known risk factors, still die from SIDS. Notwithstanding these problems, we do know that mothers that smoke all through 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 reveal that SIDS happens primarily during the winter months, and girls are affected less than boys. The infant has at times had a slight respiratory infection and might 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 new research report released by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) established that more than half of SIDS cases happened while the newborn was co-sleeping together with an adult or another youngster. Of those deaths, many happened in a potentially dangerous environment, such as in a bed or on a sofa with an individual which had recently used drugs or alcohol.
A number of studies have shown that an irregularity on the brain stem which regulates respiratory processes was responsible for the loss of life, although this theory does not have enough medical research to support it at this time. While very unusual, anaphylaxis from any cause — such as a food, medicine, or environmental allergen — can lead to abrupt, unexpected death. With the basis of a well-documented case of deadly anaphylactic shock in twin newborns that happened after each received a second dose of diphtheria toxoid and whole-cell pertussis vaccine (DwP), the committee concluded that the evidence favors recognition of a link concerning 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 decline has been achieved mostly by means of public education campaigns informing parents concerning several important factors associated with an increased risk of SIDS. While they have suggested methods, there is no absolute approach to preventing SIDS from occurring.
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