There is nothing so immeasurably sad as the death of an infant. And when that death is attributed to SIDS-- sudden infant death syndrome -- the sadness is amplified by confusion and maddening uncertainty. For while doctors have given this syndrome a name for decades, and while it is listed as the leading cause of death among infants between one month and one year old, it's still just a "diagnosis of exclusion" -- the medical community can't fully explain why it happens and can only offer educated guesses as to how parents might protect their children.
This week brought another potential factor to parents' attention. A conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and published Monday in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, found that infants sleeping in a room where air was ventilated with a fan had a 72 percent lower risk of SIDS than babies who slept without fans. The idea is that a fan circulates fresh air and lessens the extent to which the baby re-inhales its own exhaled breath.
That's in keeping with earlier findings that soft bedding (into which a baby might sink her face) and pacifier use may be linked to SIDS; it's thought that both might impede sleeping babies' ability to breathe. Other apparent include living in a house with a smoker and being premature or having low birth weight; black and American Indian babies seem to be at elevated risk of SIDS, and SIDS affects more baby boys than girls. Most SIDS deaths occur in fall or winter.
But a leading SIDS expert was quick to warn that this study, while
promising, is not conclusive, and that there are many factors that may
contribute to the unexplained death of an infant. Marian Willinger,
special assistant for SIDS
research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development, writes:
The link between fan use and risk for Sudden Infant Death syndrome is an interesting finding that needs to be confirmed by further research. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough, however, that there is no substitute for the most effective means known to reduce the risk of SIDS: always placing infants for sleep on their backs. Other ways to reduce SIDS risk in the sleep environment include using firm mattresses and avoiding soft bedding such as comforters and quilts, providing a separate sleep environment, preventing infants from overheating, and not smoking around infants.
I vividly remember fitting each of my babies into a special foam wedge device designed to keep them sleeping on one side, not on their tummies, through the night. That didn't keep me from worrying and checking on them frequently while they slept. Side-sleeping has now been discounted as a preventive measure against SIDS: like Willinger at the National Institutes of Health, the stands firm in saying .
Do you take -- or did you, when your kids were infants -- precautions against SIDS? Are you a stickler for having your baby sleep on her back? What do you make of this new information about fans and SIDS?
