Cot-death alarm

Press, 19 January 1979, Page 10

Cot-death alarm

NZPA Boston Alarms that blare when infants stop breathing are being used to alert adults so they can save tots from cot death, a syndrome that annually kills thousands of seemingly healthy children. The devices have been tested for five years at Massachusetts General Hospital, and doctors say they provide an almost foolproof way to summon help for a child suffering from sudden infant death syndrome, the formal name for cot death. Usually, victims of the _ syndrome die in their sleep without crying out or struggling, although there is apparently more than one form of cot death. Doctors believe that - many of the babies who succumb to it simply stop breathing. When a child is sleeping, he or she wears a belt that is attached by a cord to an electronic box about the size of a stereo receiver. If the baby stops breathing for more than 20 seconds, a 70-decibel alarm goes off.

By the time an adult reaches the infant, the child is sometimes limp and (flue; If the baby does not start breathing again, doctors recommend that the parents shake the child gently, following with more vigorous jostling if necessary. Finally, if shaking fails, doctors recommend mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. So far, doctors at the hospital have provided the devices to the parents of 260 babies, and 60 per cent of the infants have had serious episodes of breathing difficulty while hooked to the monitors. Cot deaths claim fhe lives of 10,000 babies in the United States each year, being the single biggest killer of children between the ages of two weeks and one year. A serious problem still facing doctors is determining which babies should be attached to the monitors. Doctors usually do not know a baby is in danger of cot death until the infant has been rescued from a near : fatal attack.