Despite declines in prevalence during the past two decades, sudden infant death syndrome
(SIDS) continues to be the leading cause of death for infants aged between 1 month and 1
year in developed countries.
How long has SIDS been recognised?
From 1972, Little is known of the final physiologic mechanism(s) resulting in SIDS. Five infants participated in this study, three of whom were referred at about 1 month of age because of cyanotic episodes of undetermined etiology. laboratory sleep studies revealed frequent periods of apnea (≥ 2 seconds) which (1) decreased in amount after a certain age and (2) were most frequent during REM sleep. All infants had a number of prolonged apneic and cyanotic episodes during sleep, some requiring vigorous resuscitative efforts. Prolonged apnea most often occurred in conjunction with an upper-respiratory tract infection or when frequent apnea was noted in the laboratory. Two of the infants subsequently died of SIDS.
The follow up article to that was in 1992. two children in a family plagued with the affliction had died within hours of their release from his Syracuse research project. the paper indicated a more sinister possibility to Dr. John F. Hick of Minnesota. In a letter to the journal, he wrote that the case offered “circumstantial evidence suggesting a critical role for the mother in the death of her children.” Of five children, four died in early infancy and the other died without explanation at age 28 months. Woman Confeses in Deaths of Children.
Waneta E. Hoyte said her five children died because they cried. In a signed confesion, she said she smothered her children, Erik, James, Julie, Moly and Noah. The statement, one of two provided to investigators by Mrs. Hoyt, transformed what had been a textbok case of so-caled crib death of her five children more than 20 years ago into another kind of family cataclysm: an unthinkable crime.
From 1966, the Lancet, The idea that “ cot deaths “ might be due to anaphylactic shock.
From 1965, “ON CATS AND CRIB DEATH”. An inquiry was recently held at Battersea into the circumstances of the death of a 1-month-old infant. A relative of the deceased stated that the infant was put to bed at mid-day, and half an hour later, when she went into the room, she found the cat curled up on the child’s face.
SIDS was known about 100 years ago. But the number of articles about it increased from 68 for all years up to 1968, a further 74 in 1969-1970, and a further 100 in 1971-1972, up a further 219 articles in 1973-1974.
From 1973, A total of 942 deaths from SIDS were studied over a four-year period in Chicago. The only consistent finding was an inverse relationship between SIDS and temperature in three of the four years of the study.
From 1974. For hospital deaths among whites, the only significant regression coefficient was that for birth weight. It was estimated that in 1958 the rate of SIDSp, in the United States was 2.2 per 1000; by extrapolation it was estimated that by 1969 this had fallen to 1.5 per 1000. Various interpretations were offered to account for the positive association between SIDSp and longitude among white infants, and the absence of any such association among black infants. From a set of Vital Statistics of the United States published only for the year 1958 …
Specially designed surveys have so far reported the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome as varying from .31 per 1000 live births in the Ashkelon District of Israel to 5.93 per 1000 live births among American Indians in California. US average SIDS rates for 1958 per 1000 live births are 1.5 for whites and 6.0 for blacks, an enormous difference. Low birth weight was the dominant correlation for whites, but blacks had an inverse correlation with low birth weight.