Flawed bed-sharing studies need to stop.

So today I went online, had a browse at the news... and what jumped out at me straight away?

Headlines such as 'Cot deaths Risks of Bed Sharing' - The title in itself doesn't even make sense! Now, that's a paradox if ever I saw one!

What other headlines were there? 

Bed-sharing increases SIDS risk, Bed-sharing 'raises cot death risk fivefold' and many more...

I have to be honest here, I can't even work out where to begin with this horrendous 'study' and awful media reporting of it. Link to article

Whilst reading the article, the first thing that jumped out at me was this "In this combined dataset, 22% (n=323) of the deaths occurred while bed sharing" - So wait, 88% of the deaths occurred while NOT bed sharing. Ok.

Not only that but Out of the 323 SIDS cases that died whilst bedsharing only 87.7% were attributable to bed sharing (assuming that they would otherwise have been placed on their back on a cot in the parents’ room).

So 283 deaths were attributed to bed-sharing. Out of 1472 deaths. Which means 1149 deaths were not attributed to bed-sharing.

Moving on from that strange bit of logic.

Notes on variables. These two really struck a chord with me.

 

Bed sharing was defined as when one or both parents slept with the baby in their bed so that they woke to find the baby dead in bed with them. 

Breastfed—infant was being partially or completely breastfed at the time of death or interview. 

 

So what do we notice about these variables? Well there are safe ways to bed-share, just as there are safe ways to put a baby to sleep in a cot. 

The first rule of safe bedsharing is that the baby should be exclusively, not partially breastfed.

Although bed-sharing often includes partners, and potentially siblings, the safest way to bed-share is with the mother and the infant only. If a partner is in the bed, the safest place for baby to sleep is not between them, but next to the mum. Other studies have found that there was no increased SIDS risk for babies who shared their beds with just one person - their mothers (Hauck and Herman 2006).

 

Why bother to do a study about bed-sharing, without factoring in variables that make the practice unsafe?

To study bed-sharing with regards to SIDS there needs to be studies that encompass only safe bed-sharing principles.

This study managed to leave out:

The type of mattress - soft or firm?

Whether the bed had a headboard, how close mattress was to the floor.

What baby slept with - duvet, blankets, pillows, toys?

Where baby was placed in the bed - by the edge, against the wall, between parents?

The temperature of the rooms

Whether the parents were known heavy or restless sleepers

Whether the baby was born premature

Whether the mother was on legal medication

Was the bed-sharing planned in advance?

etc.

And the final thing I noticed, right near the end, in amongst a large paragraph:

"Bias is also possible due to the selection of the studies"

So when will we get to see a large study, without so much missing data, with more variables...

When will we see a study showing only habits of safe bed-sharing compared with safe cot-sleeping? to determine the real risks of SIDS?