Definition
Typically the infant is found dead after having been put to bed, and exhibits no signs of having suffered.
SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion. It should be applied to only those cases in which an infant's death is sudden and unexpected, and remains unexplained after the performance of an adequate postmortem investigation, including:
- an autopsy (by an experienced pediatric pathologist, if possible);
- investigation of the death scene and circumstances of the death;
- exploration of the medical history of the infant and family.
Australia and New Zealand are shifting to the term "sudden unexpected death in infancy" (SUDI) for professional, scientific and coronial clarity.
The term SUDI is now often used instead of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) because some coroners prefer to use the term 'undetermined' for a death previously considered to be SIDS. This change is causing diagnostic shift in the mortality data.
In addition, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently proposed that such deaths be called "sudden unexpected infant deaths" (SUID) and that SIDS is a subset of SUID.
Read more about this topic: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Mothers often are too easily intimidated by their children’s negative reactions...When the child cries or is unhappy, the mother reads this as meaning that she is a failure. This is why it is so important for a mother to know...that the process of growing up involves by definition things that her child is not going to like. Her job is not to create a bed of roses, but to help him learn how to pick his way through the thorns.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals—just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)