The Raleigh N&O On SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)

I'm generally fairly more skeptical about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) cases than most Pediatricians. There are many reasons for that.

One of those reasons has to do with the only time I was ever sued (unsuccessfully) for "malpractice" . . . a baby died while sleeping on the couch with its Mother. The post (autopsy) results took six months to come back and were inconclusive for any definite cause-of-death.

As this occurred in a location where lawyers are on TV every morning, noon and night trolling for business ("If you think your baby was harmed, call us!"), the parents sued everyone whose name was ever on the baby's chart (including me - as I had seen the child in the Emergency Department two days before it died - diagnosed it with a viral illness and sent it home).

The attorney involved was shaking the tree (have I said lately how much I HATE lawyers?). I was "lucky". The case (or at least the case against me) was dismissed within a year.

The experience was nevertheless very, very traumatic for me. But if you live through something like that, you learn . . . and when the mighty Pediatric blogger "Flea" went down in flames . . . after being "outed" on the stand during his own malpractice trial (he blogged it while it was in progress) . . . I blogged about my experience being sued.

Blogging about it was very cathartic . . . a release of pent-up frustration with our broken medico-legal system. I think more physicians should talk about these things . . . as opposed to hiding and cowering in shame. If we'd been doing that all along, we might have had better healthcare "reform" legislation passed (as opposed to the impending fiscal disaster that we got).

The Raleigh News & Observer has a pair of stories up this morning that are worth taking a look at. It's aparently the first part of a series. SIDS isn't always SIDS. Of course, I already knew that.

It's my opinion that we are going to be seeing more "SIDS" cases in the coming years . . . as the economy continues to falter . . . and (bolstered by a government that seems bound & determined to feed a growing sense of entitlement) more and more people become parents that perhaps do not need to be parents so soon (or at all).

Young Mothers will look right at you after you tell them not to sleep with their babies - or not to put them on their stomachs/on pillows . . . and then go and do exactly what you tell them not to do (the doctor doesn't know what she's talking about). And there are many young men out there who do not know how to channel their anger away from their children.

But they will turn around and blame the doctor when something very bad happens.

Law enforcement is going to need to be vigilant.

But we know how that works in North Carolina don't we?