Researchers uncover higher risk for SIDS, suffocation
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Tara Haelle
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, Oct. 13, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- One of the most dangerous places for a sleeping baby is a sofa, according to a new study.
Of nearly 8,000 infant sleeping deaths in the United States, researchers found that about 12 percent were sofa-related. And nearly three-quarters of those infants were newborns.
"It was shocking that one in eight SIDS and infant sleep-related deaths occurs on a sofa," said study co-author Dr. Jeffrey Colvin, a pediatrician at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. "Sofas don't even come to mind when people think of places where infants sleep. The proportion was much, much higher than I ever could have guessed."
SIDS refers to sudden infant death syndrome -- an apparently healthy baby's unexplained death that usually occurs during sleep. Approximately 4,000 babies die of SIDS each year in the United States, though the rate halved in the early 1990s after pediatricians began encouraging parents to place babies to sleep on their backs.
The new study found that infants who died sleeping on a sofa were nearly twice as likely to die from suffocation or strangulation as babies who died sleeping elsewhere. Among those infants, 40 percent died due to suffocation or strangulation, 36 percent had an undetermined cause of death and 24 percent died from SIDS.
Colvin and his colleagues looked at more than 7,900 infant sleeping deaths reported over an eight-year period in 24 states. About half of these deaths occurred in an adult bed, and one in five occurred in a crib. But the researchers focused on the approximately 1,000 sofa deaths.
The findings were published online Oct. 13 in the journal Pediatrics.
The vast majority of the babies who died on sofas were 3 months old or younger. And several other characteristics distinguished these deaths from infant sleep deaths on other surfaces, according to the report.
Babies who died on a sofa were over six times more likely to be sleeping in a new place compared to babies who died on adult beds or in their cribs. This implies that falling asleep on a sofa may have been accidental, said Dr. Cigal Shaham, an attending physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
"Infants often end up sleeping on the sofa because one parent is trying to feed the baby without disturbing the other parent, or they think they will watch TV or do something while they are up with the baby in the middle of the night, but then they unintentionally fall asleep out of exhaustion," she said.
The study also found that babies who died while asleep on the sofa were about twice as likely to be sleeping with someone else compared to babies who died sleeping in other places.
source : Sleeping on Sofa Can Be Deadly for Babies, Study Finds
