Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/mIwQOTwREXY A mother smoking before and during pregnancy increases the risk that her child will die unexpectedly during infancy.  Seattle Children’s Hospital pediatricians and the data jockeys at Microsoft Corporation collaborated to analyze the CDC’s infant death data covering almost 21 million births and close to 20,000 episodes of infant death. The risk of unexpected infant death skyrocketed by a factor of nearly 2.5 times with any maternal cigarette smoking, even one cigarette a day, during pregnancy.  The chance that her infant might die increased by 7% for each cigarette from 1 to 20 per day.  Even mothers who smoked within 3 months before becoming pregnant and quit once pregnant had a 47% increased chance of an infant death. This study adds the precision of huge numbers to previous investigations that have already associated maternal smoking with sudden infant death.  If you are even thinking about becoming pregnant, you and anyone with whom you live should stop smoking at lea