[Sudden death syndrome in infancy. I. Methods for the identification of high risk infants]

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) occurs with a high frequency, about 2 in every 1,000 live newborns, and could be prevented by home monitoring. However, identification of infants at high risk must first be made. In this paper, we report the epidemiological factors of 36 selected infants with a well known high risk of SIDS. Two different scorings for the evaluation of high risk SIDS were compared and used in these children. The Sheffield scoring showed high risk in 11 (30.5%) of the cases versus 7 (9.7%) in the normal control group (p = 0.013). By using the multistage scoring method, 27 (75.0%) of the cases had a high risk versus 8 (11.1%) in the controls (p < 0.001). Nevertheless, by the latter method, too many normal infants (41 = 56.9%) were predicted to have a moderate risk of SIDS. The multistage test seems more useful than the Sheffield test, but has the limitation of having to be evaluated at one month of age, whereas results of the Sheffield test are obtained at birth. The epidemiological circumstances could be different in every social level or geographical area, so the usefulness of each scoring procedure must be evaluated in the normal population previous to being used in study groups.