Infant with an apparent life-threatening event and possible risk for sudden infant death syndrome.

Pediatricians may be asked by anxious parents to care for their infant who survived a possible sudden death. The child was found unresponsive, pale or cyanotic, and apparently not breathing. The accident occurred unexpectedly, and only a prompt intervention by one of the caretakers permitted a normalization of the child's behavior. The following line discuss some aspects of the prevention of a sudden infant death. There are based on articles and reviews that appeared in the recent literature [1-3], as well as on our local experience. The purpose of these notes is to give the pediatrician some information on the practical aspects of the management of such infants with an apparent life-threatening event. The manuscript ends with some comments about the possible identification of high risk infants on the basis of the available neurophysiological data.