Hacker News Reader

Comment by adrr | Hacker News Reader

There’s multiple devices to detect SIDS. They have socks that act as oximeters, they have a camera to detect breathing, and they have sensors that sit under the crib pad that can detect the small movements of the baby breathing.

Also if you add a fan to the room and keep it on while the baby is sleeping, it reduces SIDS by almost 80%.

https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/family-resources-educati...

View on HN

That makes me so angry.

I'm not sure when the study was done, but that article was first (c) 2000. I have never had a doctor or nurse mention running a fan, and neither my wife or I have come across that when researching care of our children... but a 72% decrease in fatality is pretty damn close to an outright cure. How is this not broadcast loudly to every parent of a newborn?

This article¹ (you can find the full text on scihub) mentions that many flaws appear in the original study, such as

"Only 6 of the 167 coroner-pronounced SIDS cases used fans, while only 36 of 309 controls used fans."

and

"The case and control groups were not similar at the beginning of the study."

---

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19414701/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome: “Evidence is not sufficient for the use of fans (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22753789/)”

That paper is from 2012, but I can’t find a newer paper that changes that. For example https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27940805/, from 2016, doesn’t mention fans in its abstract.

> How is this not broadcast loudly to every parent of a newborn?

Having a child is an extremely frustrating experience from this point of view.

It's also very frustrating because of so many competing and changing loudly broadcast advice, especially on SIDS. Yeah the science evolves but it's hard to follow when even pediatricians themselves don't always manage to stay up to date.

The link you shared doesn't share a link (or name, or date) about the study. This is the one referenced.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18838649/

>Also if you add a fan to the room and keep it on while the baby is sleeping, it reduces SIDS by almost 80%.

Even assuming that this very small and self-reported study is accurate (which is doubtful itself) making a causative link here seems wildly unreasonable. Unless you can suggest a mechanism I think it's much more likely that there is some link between people who use fans and something related to SIDs.

They suggest a causative link in the article: carbon dioxide concentrations near the infant's nose and mouth which can cause suffocation.

I am going to go ahead and call BS on gas concentration increasing beyond noise level in even the most stale air environment. Even assuming that could be the case, the area around an infant is practically a hurricane on the scale we're talking about- the smallest movement, the slightest temperature gradient, the tiniest breath of the infant is going to be very disruptive to any local gas pockets. It's incredibly unlikely to be related unless infants are sensitive to the tiniest possible CO2 concentration changes, in which case sitting in a car or other sealed space would be dramatically more likely to cause infant death.

unless infants are sensitive to the tiniest possible CO2 concentration changes,.

Yes, they are. This is documented scientific fact.

in which case sitting in a car or other sealed space would be dramatically more likely to cause infant death

This is also not recommended. Note that nearly all modern automatically vent new air into the vehicle...

You have, in fact, lit upon the mechanism at play: some infants are sensitive to even tiny CO2 concentration changes, particularly when risk factors are combined. There is a reflex where instead of breathing more when CO2 levels rise, infants stop breathing all together: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2015.0022...

While a car is moving it has ventilation, and it's illegal to leave an infant alone in a parked car in part for this very reason. But sleeping in a car seat is one of the risk factors for SIDs.

huh. I guess I learned something, thanks. I guess it makes some sense - infants are somewhat still in the transitory phase between breathing being a fun side activity and breathing being essential to living.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com