A Pediatrics report published in 2009 sited Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as one of the primary causes of post neonatal newborn death for babies following one month of age. The research found that a large amount of SIDS deaths take place in newborns who are between 2 and 4 months old.
The number one killer of children under the age of 1 is SIDS. It makes up nearly 9% of all newborn death, and happens mostly in the first 6 months of life. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome seldom occurs before 1 month of age or following 6 months.
About 2,600 newborns in the United States die each year from SIDS. In Canada, SIDS is the main cause of death for babies over four weeks old, accounting for about one infant death out of every 1,400 live births. Three decades of research have discovered factors that raise the risk of SIDS-such as letting babies sleep on their stomachs-but no definitive answers as to what causes the condition. In spite of years of intensive study, the causes of SIDS remain unidentified.
What the Latest Research Can Tell Us
Infants under the age of one year are more prone to SIDS. Usually, a SIDS death occurs when a quietly sleeping newborn simply never wakes up. Newborns may be subjected to episodes termed apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). These are clinical events in which young infants can go through sudden changes in breathing, color, or muscle tone. Newborns have died as a result of SIDS at all times of the day and night, in car seats, strollers, cribs, bassinets, even in a parent’s devoted arms. Though SIDS used to be referred to more frequently as crib death, that does not designate that it only happened in cribs, that simply tended to be where most dead newborns were found.
To add even greater complexity to the matter, doctors and police could be unaware of a family’s history, or they may be blinded by sympathy for the inconsolable parents. A dreadful account is of Marybeth Tinning of Schenectady, New York, who won only sympathy as, one by one, her nine babies died of SIDS and other vague natural causes between 1972 and 1985. Doctors still do not know what causes this condition. In truth, the judgment of SIDS is made simply after every other possible explanations are ruled out.
Newborns with supposed cases of SIDS ought to have an autopsy done 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 interpretation of postmortem information varies, in part, because a lot of investigative certifier systems do not have a written procedure that lists the criteria to be used to diagnose SIDS. Babies of all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic groups are potentially vulnerable, though with varying risk. Babies at maximum SIDS risk consist of: pre-term newborns, especially those weighing less than 2.3 pounds or 1,000 gm; newborns 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 tend to have elevated concentrations of nicotine and cotinine (a biological marker for secondhand smoke exposure) in their lungs than those who die from other causes. Newborns that come into contact with secondhand smoke after birth are also at a greater risk of SIDS.
Infants whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were born with smaller airways. That causes predisposed breathing complications after birth. We also know that more babies die of SIDS whose mothers smoked through and after pregnancy. Infants make a ton of phlegm and have a huge amount 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 in pregnancy can diminish the amount of oxygen the fetus receives. Cigarette taxes and laws regulating indoor smoking are well-known to be powerful predictors of smoking behaviors amongst all adults and pregnant women. If smoking is in fact a underlying determinant of SIDS, then policies that reduce smoking ought to have the added advantage of dropping SIDS cases.
The dilemma with branding smoking as a contributory determinant of SIDS is obvious: newborns not exposed to cigarette smoke nevertheless die of SIDS. To make things even more complicated, studies show that babies which are breast fed, who have had fantastic prenatal care, who were full term as well as of normal birth weight, that have parents that have never used drugs, to the point, who have no recognized risk factors, nonetheless die from SIDS. Notwithstanding these problems, we do know that mothers who smoke during pregnancy are three times more likely to have a SIDS baby and exposure to passive smoke after pregnancy doubles a baby’s risk of SIDS.
Statistics reveal that SIDS takes place most often during the winter months, and girls are affected less than boys. The baby has from time to time had a mild respiratory infection and might not have been feeding well in the previous weeks. Statistics show that African-American and Native-American babies are at higher risk.
A recent research report released by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) established that more than half of SIDS cases occurred while the baby was co-sleeping along with an adult or another young person. Of those deaths, some occurred in a potentially unsafe situation, like in a bed or on a couch with an individual who had recently used drugs or alcohol.
Several studies have revealed that an malformation in the brain stem that controls respiratory processes was to blame for the loss of life, although this premise does not have enough medical support at this time. Although exceedingly rare, anaphylaxis as a result of any cause — such as a food, medicine, or environmental allergen — can lead to abrupt, unexpected death. With the basis of a well-documented instance 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 data favors acknowledgment of a relationship between this vaccine and infant death due to anaphylaxis.
The good news update is that the rate of SIDS is on the drop in the United States and other countries. That drop has been achieved mostly because of public education campaigns educating parents regarding some key factors linked 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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