Citation

Krous HF, Haas EA, Manning JM, Deeds A, Silva PD, Chadwick AE, Stanley C. Child Maltreat. 2006; 11(3): 247-256.

Affiliation

Children's Hospital, San Diego; University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1077559506289586

PMID

16816322

Abstract

The potential diagnostic significance of prior family referral to Child Protective Services (CPS) in cases of sudden infant death is unknown. Therefore, the authors retrospectively searched for CPS data for the 5-year referral history on all 533 families whose infants died suddenly from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), other natural diseases, accidents, or inflicted injuries and underwent postmortem examination by the medical examiner during a 10-year period. No family had more than one infant death. At least 27% of the families in each group had at least one CPS referral. The data suggest that a family's referral to CPS prior to their sudden death of their infant does not increase the likelihood that it was caused by inflicted injuries, and prior referral should not preclude a diagnosis of SIDS. The authors recommend future prospective studies that include refined exposure histories and that are large enough to have sufficient statistical power to compare family CPS referrals and outcomes in groups of infants who died suddenly with a matched group of living infants.

Language: en