Word: sudden
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...study by researchers with Kaiser Permanente Northern California suggests a simple strategy for reducing the risk of sudden death of infants in their sleep: turning on a fan at night...
...study's findings, based on data collected from nearly 500 mother-and-child pairs in California between 1997 and 2000, indicate that the use of a fan in an infant's room may reduce the likelihood of sudden death by 72%. But the data suggest that the protective effect applies mostly to babies in poor sleeping environments - those who are put to bed in overheated rooms or on their stomach...
...National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a statement in response to the study, published Oct. 6 in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, warning that "that there is no substitute for the most effective means known to reduce the risk of [sudden infant death syndrome, or] SIDS: always placing infants for sleep on their backs...
Indeed, the study's authors say that caretakers who followed established safety guidelines were less likely overall to suffer the sudden death of a child, compared with those who tended not to take the same precautions. The study also found that when fans were used in the absence of other environmental risk factors - that is, when parents already had other safeguards in place - it had no significant additional impact on the risk of SIDS...
...baby was already in a good sleeping environment, there wasn't very much chance they were 'rebreathing,'" says Dr. De-Kun Li of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research and a co-author of the study, referring to the re-inhalation of carbon dioxide that is associated with sudden unexplained death. "So it's not surprising that adding a fan, or not, didn't make that much difference...