«Sudden infant death syndrome» (SIDS) term unifies cases of non-violent, unexpectedly occurred death of a child under one year of age in the absence of objective data explaining the causes of death, history of disease and postmortem examination.

OBJECTIVE

To identify the diagnostic criteria allowing to determine the immediate cause of death in SIDS.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

We analyzed data on 64 cases of sudden deaths of infants under 1 year of age between 2016 and 2023. All cases of sudden death) were subjected to forensic medical examination arbitrarily for the purpose of excluding violent cause of death (trauma, poisoning). Judicial committee workers requested and preliminarily studied in detail the medical records. Standards of forensic medical examination, established by regulatory order (federal laws and orders) were applied in the corpse’s examination. Exclusion group included cases with confirmed chronic or congenital diseases, as well as cases of violent deaths.

RESULTS

The use of an established postmortem examination algorithm and an international standardized autopsy protocol significantly increases the number of identified causes of death, while reducing the frequency of SIDS diagnoses, that in turn allows to improve the quality of health care system work worldwide.

CONCLUSION

It is necessary to develop and implement analogue of used abroad algorithm in the practice of domestic forensic medical experts and pathologists, that will allow to reveal the most frequent causes of death of children, draw attention of medical staff to them and, as a consequence, improve the quality of life-time diagnosis and contribute to the reduction of infant mortality.