Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is marked by the sudden death of an infant that is not predicted by medical history and remains unexplained after a thorough forensic autopsy and detailed death scene investigation. As infants are at the highest risk for SIDS during sleep, it is sometimes referred to as cot death or crib death. The cause of SIDS is unknown, but some characteristics associated with the syndrome have been identified. The unique signature characteristic of SIDS is its log-normal age distribution that spares infants shortly after birth — the time of maximal risk for almost all other causes of non-trauma infant death. Other notable characteristics are its disproportionate affliction of male infants and the fact that caregivers are unaware in the preceding 24 hours that the infant is at risk of imminent sudden death. Many risk factors and medical causal relationships are proposed for SIDS. Infants sleeping prone or exposed to tobacco smoke are at greater risk than infants sleeping supine or unexposed to tobacco smoke. Genetics also play a role, as SIDS is more prevalent in males. SIDS prevention strategies include a well-ventilated sleeping room and putting infants on their back to sleep. Pacifiers and tummy time can help reduce known risk factors. Despite the gradual expansion of medical knowledge on SIDS causes and risk factors, definitive diagnosis remains difficult; infanticide and child abuse cases may be misdiagnosed as SIDS due to lack of evidence, and caretakers of SIDS victims are sometimes falsely accused of foul play. Accidental suffocations are also sometimes misdiagnosed as SIDS and vice versa.

Read more about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome:  Definition, Risk Factors, Differential Diagnosis, Epidemiology

Famous quotes containing the words sudden, infant, death and/or syndrome:

    There are these sudden mobs of men,
    These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
    An immense suppression, freed,
    These voices crying without knowing for what,
    Except to be happy, without knowing how,
    Imposing forms they cannot describe,
    Requiring order beyond their speech.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    To worry about spoiling an infant by comforting him when he cries is needless.... If you put the baby down and the baby cries, pick him up. His crying isn’t a habit you should try to break. Your baby can’t be taught not to cry.
    Lawrence Balter (20th century)

    For the bright side of the painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

    Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.
    Jean Baker Miller (20th century)