A national campaign has been calling the attention of mothers to practice safe sleeping positions for babies to reduce the rate of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and other infant death from causes related to sleep but new studies show other areas where the campaign still needs to focus on.
SIDS or crib death is the unexpected and sudden death of an infant below one year old due to unknown causes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SIDS is the number one cause of death among children ages one to 12 months and over 2,000 infants in the U.S. died from it in 2010.
In 1994, the campaign emphasized on one of the most important guidelines for mothers and that is to put their infants on their backs to sleep. Following this recommended practice reduces the risk by 50 percent. Mothers are also discouraged to share beds with their babies.
According to a new study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) in Vancouver, many families to not follow recommended sleep practices for infants. 19 percent of mothers usually share their bed with their baby, a common practice that appears to put babies almost three times more at risk to die from SIDS from those who sleep on their own. This practice seems to be increasing over time. 28 percent of these mothers were Hispanics, 18.4 percent were blacks and 13.7 were whites.
Around 10 percent of the mothers regularly put their infants to sleep on their stomachs. 21.6 percent of these mothers were blacks, 10.4 percent were whites and 7.1 percent were Hispanics.
Based on the study, overall, nine percent of the mothers put their infants to sleep in stomach-down or other prone, high risk positions and it reached the national reduction target. These mothers were 20 percent blacks, 10 percent whites and 6 percent Hispanics.
Researchers also found that half of the parents do not place their babies on their backs to sleep and around two-thirds of babies in the U.S. born after full term pregnancies are put on their backs to sleep but the rate for pre-term babies is lower.
"The more preterm the babies were, the less likely they were to be placed on their back," study lead Sunah Hwang said. "That's particularly worrisome given that these are more vulnerable infants who are at higher risk for SIDS, sleep-related deaths and other complications." Hwang is a neonatologist at South Shore Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital.
