Causes of sudden infant death syndrome from post-mortem examination

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was first defined in the USA as: 'The sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history'. More recently, diverse studies have shown that some cases of SIDS can be explained, when an accurate post-mortem examination is performed. The primary objective of the present paper was to delineate possible causes of SIDS as derived from a review of autoptic studies reported in the literature.