Blankets, bed-sharing common in accidental baby suffocations
CHICAGO, USA (AP) — Accidental suffocation is a leading cause of deaths in US infants and common scenarios involve blankets, bed-sharing with parents and other unsafe sleeping practices, an analysis of government data found.
These deaths “are entirely preventable. That’s the most important point”, said Dr Fern Hauck, a co-author and University of Virginia expert in infant deaths.
Among 250 suffocation deaths, roughly 70 per cent involved blankets, pillows or other soft bedding that blocked infants’ airways. Half of these soft bedding-related deaths occurred in an adult bed where most babies were sleeping on their stomachs.
Almost 20 per cent suffocated when someone in the bed accidentally moved against or on top of them, and about 12 per cent died when their faces were wedged against a wall or mattress.
The authors studied 2011-2014 data from a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention registry of deaths in 10 states. The results offer a more detailed look at death circumstances than previous studies using vital records, said lead author Alexa Erck Lambert, a CDC researcher.
The authors said anecdotal reports suggest there’s been little change in unsafe sleeping practices in more recent years.
“It is very, very distressing that in the US we’re just seeing this resistance, or persistence of these high numbers,” Hauck said.
The study was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
For years, the US Government and the American Academy of Pediatrics have waged safe-sleep campaigns aimed at preventing accidental infant suffocations and strangulations and sudden infant death syndrome. These include “back to sleep” advice promoting having babies sleep on their backs, which experts believe contributed to a decline in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) over nearly 30 years. But bed-sharing has increased, along with bed-related accidental suffocations — from six deaths per 100,000 infants in 1999 to 23 per 100,000 in 2015, the researchers note.
Dr Rachel Moon, a University of Virginia paediatrics professor not involved in the study, said the results are not surprising.
“Every day I talk to parents who have lost babies. They thought they were doing the right thing, and it seems safe and it seems OK, until you lose a baby,” Moon said.
