The tragedy of sudden unexpected infant deaths – and how bedsharing, maternal smoking and stomach sleeping all contribute
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Fern R. Hauck, University of Virginia
(THE CONVERSATION) Unsafe sleep practices underlie most sudden unexpected infant deaths in the U.S., with three-quarters of infants affected by multiple unsafe practices at the time of death, and almost 60% sharing a sleep surface with another person. These are the key findings from our recent study published in Pediatrics.
Sudden unexpected infant death, or SUID, occurs in infants less than 1 year old who die suddenly and unexpectedly without an obvious cause before investigation, accounting for about 3,400 deaths annually in the U.S.. These infants die from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, or other ill-defined and unknown causes.
Infants sharing a sleep surface with parents, other adults or other infants or children is highly discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics and numerous other agencies because it can increase the risk of these deaths.
So the high occurrence of surface sharing – also called bedsharing – in our study is alarming. The study included 7,595 infants who died from SUID during the period 2011 to 2020 and who were in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s SUID Case Registry, which collects data from child death review teams in 23 states, cities or counties.
We examined characteristics...