SUDC Awareness
A healthy happy child, over the age of one, goes to sleep and never wakes up. This nightmare is the reality of hundreds of families every year. Most people and medical professionals are not even familiar with the term SUDC (Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood). Awareness is the first step to finding answers, getting better data, driving more research, and protecting families from experiencing SUDC in the future.
About SUDC
Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC) is a category of death in children between the ages of 1 and 18 that remains unexplained after a thorough investigation, including an autopsy.
SUDC is not a cause of death but rather a category or death when the cause is undetermined or not fully understood by medical science yet.
About 400 child deaths over the age of one fall under SUDC annually; the actual number might be higher due to limited awareness and standardized reporting.
SUDC is the 5th leading category of death in children age 1-4. When eliminating accidents and other non medical deaths it is the 3rd leading category of death in toddlers.
Most often, a seemingly healthy child goes to sleep and never wakes up.
At this time, we do not know what causes SUDC, how to predict it or how to prevent it.
Undetermined deaths from 0-18 years of age have a higher annual mortality rate than all pediatric cancers combined.
SUDC and SIDS
While SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome - for children 12 months or younger) is a term that is well known amongst the general public it is often misunderstood and misrepresented. SIDS is a subcategory of death determination falling under the umbrella of SUID (Sudden Unexpected Infant Death) when after autopsy and investigation a cause of death is undetermined. Under the SUID umbrella there are three sub categories: SIDS, undetermined, and accidental asphyxiation. SIDS and accidental suffocation are not necessarily the same. Safe sleeping practices — back sleeping, no soft items in cribs, no co-sleeping, etcetera — greatly reduce the chances of accidental asphyxiation. They can also reduce the chances of SIDS, as some studies have linked SIDS to brainstem development abnormalities, causing inadequate arousal reflexes.
In the late 1990’s SUID and SIDS researchers started to take note of hundreds of “SIDS” like cases in children over the age of one. Children who, from a developmental standpoint, were no longer typically considered at risk of lacking waking arousal reflexes. This began the first usage of the term SUDC. Until the mid 2000s their was no category of undetermined deaths for children over the age of 12 months to 18 years old. SUDC wasn’t an official category of death and many unexplained deaths would be lumped into various other categories without definitive answers, diluting potential data for researchers to utilize to explore both neurological and cardiac causes.
Medical science is still in the early stages of understanding undetermined deaths in both infants and children 12 months and older. Due to lack of awareness, funding, and standardized investigation and medical examiner practices their is a long way to go. Undetermined deaths may have multiple different causes that are unique to each case.
You can learn more about SIDS, what it is and isn’t, as well as safe sleep practices at: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
About the SUDC Foundation
The SUDC Foundation is the flagship organization worldwide whose purpose is to promote awareness, advocate for research, and support those affected by sudden unexplained death in childhood (SUDC). The SUDC Foundation provides all services at no cost to families and is a registered 501(c)(3) non profit. Frank McLean Forever partners with them closely on our shared mission.