Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

  • Wm. A. Branford

Abstract


Sudden infant death has only recently begun to attract widespread publicity and medical investigation. It is still largely ignored by the standard paediatrics textbooks and the only description of it given in formal lectures to Edinburgh medical students comes in the Forensic Medicine course. This perhaps helps to serve one useful purpose in that it may be an indication as to why the sudden infant death syndrome is still almost completely unexplained. These unfortunate children are usually found dead and, if they reach hospital at all, it is only as far as the accident and emergency department on their way to the mortuary. Most go directly to a coroner's or procurator fiscal’s post-mortem, and are thus relatively insulated from the research-orientated clinician’s attention and interest.

This syndrome is certainly no new phenomenon.  Up to the end of the last century doctors were satisfied that these deaths were due to “teething”, a wide category that included many deaths for which an adequate explanation would now be found. The 1839 Registrar-General’s returns showed a total of 5,016 infant deaths due to this “cause” . The fashion then changed towards attributing them to “status thymolymphaticus”,
although exactly why seems to be unknown.

Gradually, however, the position is becoming somewhat clearer. Werne and Garrow in the United States produced some of the first significant papers during and immediately after the second world war. In Britain Professor Sir Samuel Bedson and Dr. F. E . Camps (1951) submitted a memorandum to the Ministry of

Health, estimating an annual toll of 200 children, and suggesting an official investigation which finally bore
fruit under Professor Banks in the 1965 Report.

How to Cite
Branford, W. (1). Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Res Medica, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.2218/resmedica.v7i1.893
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