A review by Scripps Howard News Service finds that of the 4,000 victims of sudden infant death (SIDS) each year, some children "could be saved if there was a simple national standard for infant death investigations."(Source: "SIDS cases may be overlooked, not fewer" Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 9, 2007.) The review of "infant deaths going back to 1992 revealed that the quality of infant-death investigations, the level of training for coroners and the amount of oversight and review vary enormously across the country. In many cases, professional bias--both for and against a diagnosis of SIDS--trumps medical evidence."
As a result, some regions and areas correctly diagnosis SIDS while others fail to do so. For example, the SIDS rate "is 12 times higher in Mississippi than in New York. Most experts agree that the big differences are caused by how the deaths are classified, not by how the babies died." Yet these questionable statistics still guide public health policy, outreach campaigns, and government research efforts. As Theresa Covington, director of the National Center for Child Death Review Policy and Practice at the University of Michigan, says, "You have to worry about the quality of this data (from death certificates), but there are researchers still using them. I simply don't put any credibility on any research that uses those numbers anymore."
According to the article, Ohio recorded 481 SIDS cases from 2000 to 2004, with SIDS accounting for 49% of total infant deaths in the state. During the same time period, SIDS accounted for 57% of all infant deaths in the United States.
