Last year, during the appropriations hearings, we reported good news of research advances and the awarding of the Nobel prize to two of our grantees. For example, following on the four percent decline in infant mortality in 1994 that we reported last year, the trend continued with a 6 percent decline from 1994 to 1995, and the preliminary data for 1996 look equally encouraging. Consequently, stomach sleeping has changed from 80 percent of babies to 25 percent, and deaths due to SIDS have fallen by more than 30 percent in the past three years. New Mexico, with an intensive Back to Sleep campaign, had a reduction of over 60 percent in SIDS deaths.
Many premature infants have trouble breathing.
Inhaled nitric oxide is also much less expensive than the riskier surgery that often caused loss of one of the carotid arteries. In 1963, President Kennedy's son Patrick was born prematurely and died of respiratory distress syndrome. Despite all his advantages, his doctors and his parents could only watch helplessly as Patrick struggled to breathe, because the cause of RDS was not understood and there was no treatment. Now, with treatment with surfactant, new respirators, better isolettes, and advanced intravenous fluid therapy, premature babies have a far better chance to live. It began with the award of the 1995 Nobel Prize to two scientists, Drs.