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Home › Articles › Babies › Baby's Breath

Baby's Breath

What's New in Home Monitors and SIDS Research

By Belinda Clarke

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Can Home Monitoring Help Prevent SIDS?
Because no one really knows what causes SIDS, numerous studies have tried to determine whether or not home monitoring may help prevent it. To date, there is no solid evidence that home monitoring products actually prevent SIDS. However, SIDS research is definitely helping narrow the focus of where scientists need to direct their attention in the future.

A 2001 study called the Collaborative Home Infant Monitoring Evaluation (CHIME), which was funded by the NICHD, suggests that episodes of prolonged cessation of breathing or prolonged slowing of heart rate in infants, believed to be potential indicators of risk of SIDS, primarily occur before the developmental age when most SIDS deaths occur. The findings, appearing in the May 2, 2001, Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest that these events are not necessarily signs of impending SIDS.

According to the NIHCD, breathing stoppage, called apnea, and slowed heart rate, called bradycardia, have long been observed in infants at increased risk for SIDS. Researchers have assumed that if such events can be detected, for example with a monitor/alarm system, they can also be interrupted, thereby preventing SIDS. The CHIME study, which used specially designed electronic monitors in the home to detect such cardiorespiratory events in infants, revealed this assumption might not be true.

In other words, these breathing events "might be markers of vulnerability, rather than immediate indicators of SIDS," says Dr. George Lister, study group chairman and one of the authors of the article that reported the CHIME findings. "The difference in when extreme events most commonly occur and when SIDS is most likely to occur suggests that these events are not immediate precursors to SIDS, as was once thought."

Despite the fact that home monitoring is not proven to help prevent SIDS, many parents still use home monitors. Above all, many say that the added factor of having an alarm sound when the baby's breathing is interrupted gives them peace of mind.


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