A team of scientists from Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City (USA) has discovered that many of the deaths associated with sleeping babies are directly related to letting them sleep on the sofa and, especially, if they do so with an adult .
The study, which has been published in the journal Pediatrics , shows that 1 in 8 sudden deaths of babies while sleeping occurs on the couch . To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed data collected from 2004 to 2012 on sleep-related deaths in 7,934 infants less than 1 year of age.
On average, 12% of the deaths had occurred while the baby was sleeping peacefully on the couch, adding a 90% chance of death from suffocation in this context. This death occurred in newborns who slept in an unusual place for the baby to rest , so it can explain that this place is the sofa, used to take a nap and not to rest at night.
According to study co-author Jeffrey Colvin, “We did this study simply because there wasn't a lot of data on what the factors are related to these deaths . We found that one in eight deaths (related to sleep) occurred on the couch and almost 90 percent of those deaths occurred when there was also an adult.
