Also referred to as crib death or cot death.

The sudden, unexpected death of a seemingly normal, healthy infant under one year of age that remains unexplained after a thorough postmortem investigation, including an autopsy and a review of the case history.

In the United States, sudden infant death syndroms (SIDS) is the leading cause of postneonatal deaths (those occurring between the ages of 28 days and one year). According to the National Center for Health Statistics, at least 4,000 infants in the United States die of SIDS every year, or 1.03 per 1,000 live births. (In the late 1990s, many sources placed the annual total number of deaths as high as 6,000 due to possible under-reporting.) Ninety percent of SIDS deaths occur during the first six months of life, mostly between the ages of two and four months. SIDS also occurs about 1.5 times more...