A Retrospective Study of Parent’s First-Hand Experience of Premonitions and Other Anomalous Aspects of the SIDS Phenomenon: A potential “SIDS early warning system?”

Introduction The main purpose of this study is to determine the incidence of premonition in SIDS parents vs. Non-SIDS/Control Group parents and to test for a number of other anomalous "markers" noted anecdotally by decades of in the field observation. Evidence of premonition and these other "markers" as consistent elements of the SIDS phenomenon could serve as an "early warning system" for a future SIDS event if confirmed by larger studies. Methodology Both groups of SIDS parents and Control parent participants completed electronic questionnaires on the SurveyMonkey platform for statistical analysis. Results The results of this pilot study indicated statistically significant differences between the SIDS parent and Non-SIDS control study groups for premonition and a set of other anomalous markers. Conclusion The authors believe that this pilot study of premonition and other markers may provide an "early-warning" system for an impending SIDS event if confirmed with future larger studies. Importance: This pilot study confirms results of the value of premonition as well as other anomalous observations by parents whose infants may be at risk for a SIDS event. This study deserves to be confirmed by larger studies and, if so, confirmed indicates a reliable "early warning system" for an impending SIDS event. We face the problem if this SIDS event represents the small percentage of infants who will die of SIDS, even if a diagnostic evaluation and management, including hospital admission and monitoring, may not prevent death from SIDS. However, if this premonition is predictive of Sudden Unexplained Infant Death (SUID) secondary to a potentially preventable etiology, this infant death may be preventable.