Infant suffocation while breastfeeding

Excerpt

Death while being breastfed forms a specific subset of shared sleeping fatalities [1]. One of the concerns which initiated this original study was that two infants had died during breastfeeding in the post-neonatal ward of a local hospital. As the first death had been incorrectly called sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) no steps were taken to increase the monitoring of exhausted mothers while in hospital care. The second death was, however, correctly attributed to suffocation as the infant had been found dead underneath and facing into the sleeping mother’s large breast. Following this autopsy conclusion, ward protocols were changed and no further deaths have occurred in the ensuing decades. This provides an excellent illustration of the usefulness that medicolegal investigations by pathologists may have in preventing deaths. …