SIDE SLEEPING POSITION AND BED SHARING IN THE SUDDEN-INFANT-DEATH-SYNDROME

In the last decade there have been major reductions in the sudden infa nt death syndrome (SIDS) rate following prevention programmes in Austr alasia, Europe and North America, mainly due to changing infants from the prone sleeping position onto their sides or backs. This report rev iews previous SIDS observational studies with data on side sleeping po sition and bed sharing. The relative risk for SIDS calculated from pre vious studies for side vs back sleeping position is 2.02 (95% CI = 1.6 8, 2.43). This result suggests that further substantial decreases in S IDS could be expected if infants were placed to sleep on their backs. With regard to bed sharing, the summary SIDS relative risk is 2.06 (1. 70, 2.50) for infants of smoking mothers and 1.42 (1.12, 1.79) for inf ants of nonsmoking mothers. Public health policy should be directed ag ainst bed sharing by infants whose mothers smoke as they carry an incr eased risk of SIDS from bed sharing in addition to their already incre ased risk from maternal smoking. For infants of nonsmoking mothers, wh o have a low absolute risk of SIDS, the 40-50% increase in risk needs to be balanced against other perceived benefits from bed sharing, such as increased breastfeeding.