Kids asleep in car safety seats are at death risk- Study

Infants sleeping unattended in standard car safety seats are at risk of developing life-threatening breathing problems, especially if they were born prematurely, a new study, published in this week's issue of the British Medical Journal, warned.

Although, the seats have proven to be essential in protecting infants during motor vehicle accidents, when used in the recommended semi-reclined position, the seats may promote a decline in oxygen saturation in some situations.

Dr. Alistair Jan Gunn and colleagues at the University of Auckland in New Zealand studied 43 reports of babies who were referred to the Auckland Cot Monitoring Service that studies newborns at high-risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Of them, nine infants suffered some sort of life-threatening event between July 1999 and December 2000 after being left to sleep in their car seats.

All the babies, who had been left to rest in the car seats, were described as "blue," "scrunched up" and "not breathing," by their respective parents. One of them was preterm and the remainders were full term. The researchers noted that five of the nine mothers were smokers.

All infants were completely normal on examination, the report said. However, the parents were advised not to leave the babies in the car seats for long duration, and to make sure the better positioning to prevent future problems.

According to the study, all of the infants, aged 3 days to 6 months with an average birth weight of 6.9 pounds, had a bluish appearance while in the car seat and four of them were described as "limp and unresponsive" when the event occurred. "All but one case occurred when the infants had been left in the car seats indoors, allowing them to fall asleep unrestrained in an upright position," said Dr. Gunn.

To reach at a conclusion the researchers reconstructed the scene, using the infant’s own car seat. After observing the sitting position of the infants, they determined that all nine of the babies had been sitting their heads with flexed forward. They observed that infants’ heads bent forward with the jaw pressed down on the chest, leading to a narrowing of the upper airway and breathing problems.

Impressed with the recent study, Dr. Christopher Greeley, medical director of the newborn nursery at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, called the report "fairly important paper" because it warns those parents who use the useful car seats for transportation purpose, and sometimes bring a car seat into the house and leave a baby asleep in it.

"The take-home message is that parents should not leave babies unattended in car seats," Greeley said. "If you leave a very young baby in a car seat, the structure of the head, bigger in the back, can cause the airway, the trachea, to be narrowed."

By making some changes in the existing car safety seats, the researchers said, such life-threatening problems can be avoided. "Modifying car safety seats so that head flexion is unlikely could avoid the risk of apparently life threatening events," Gunn and fellow researchers suggest.

"Providing a gap behind the head for the occiput (back of the skull) allows infants to avoid bending the head, with reduced frequency of episodes of desaturation," the authors said.