Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994 TAG: 9407200014
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
At least 2,000 infants' lives could be saved annually in the United States if babies were always put to sleep on their backs or sides and not on their stomachs, said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Alexander said Tuesday that is the message the federal government and some private agencies hope to relay to parents, baby sitters and day-care workers in a national campaign to change how babies sleep.
Alexander said research in the United States and in several other nations has shown that as many as half of the fatalities from sudden infant death syndrome may be related to how a baby is put to bed.
``Traditionally, American parents have placed their babies on their stomachs to sleep,'' said Alexander. ``It is a goal of this campaign to reverse this practice and to have nearly all babies sleeping on their back and side.''
The physician said back-sleeping will not prevent all of the 6,000 U.S. deaths from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, but it is hoped that at least 2,000 babies will be saved.
SIDS is defined as sudden death of an infant younger than 1 that cannot be explained despite an autopsy, examination of the death scene and a review of the clinical history.
The campaign to educate parents about the importance of sleep positions for babies is called ``Back to Sleep.'' It is supported and endorsed by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the American Academy of Pediatrics. It will include television and newspaper ads, and 4 million brochures will be distributed in doctors' offices and hospitals.
Elders, a pediatrician, said the intensive campaign is needed to overcome decades of incorrect medical advice. ``This is contradicting what doctors, including me, have been telling parents for decades,'' she said.
Until recent years, the common advice of pediatricians to new parents was to put a baby to sleep on its stomach. Surveys show that about 45 percent of American babies still are put in the crib stomach-down.
Ann Brown of the Consumer Products Safety Commission said her group also has found that crib bedding can be lethal. She said soft, fluffy pillows, blankets, mattresses and comforters all have been found to cause infants to suffocate.
Research has shown that babies, particularly those sleeping on their stomachs, tend to breath into the soft bedding, saturate it with carbon dioxide, and then inhale the trapped gas, she said.
Sleep-position studies in New Zealand, Britain, Australia and Norway have shown that SIDS death rates can be cut by up to 50 percent.
But Alexander said that not all of the U.S. SIDS fatalities can be attributed to sleep position. Other causes are unclear.
``SIDS is one of medicine's unsolved mysteries'' despite intense scientific studies by the federal government since 1974, said Alexander. ``But face-down sleeping finally has given us a risk factor that we can do something about.''
by CNB