The “apparent life-threatening event” has long since been replaced by the “brief resolved unexplained event – an event occurring in an infant <1 year of age with:
- Cyanosis or pallor
- Absent, decreased or irregular breathing
- Marked changes in tone
- Altered level of responsiveness.
This is just a brief, single-center, retrospective chart review identifying children hospitalized for BRUE and their outcomes up to 5 years. These authors identified 120 hospitalized infants under one year of age meeting criteria for BRUE, and performed telephone follow-up at least 6 months after the event. Most children hospitalized were less than 1 month of age, and about half were hospitalized for apnea or breathing issues. Of the 87 they were able to contact, none had died or developed chronic medical illness, 71 had developed normally, and the remainder developed either a global or verbal developmental delay.
This is a small sample, to be sure, but these data suggest children hospitalized for BRUE are not specifically at risk for long-term poor neurologic or cardiac outcomes above the baseline population level.
“Long-Term Follow-Up of Infants After a Brief Resolved Unexplained Event–Related Hospitalization”