What is the Down Syndrome Life Expectancy?
When a mother learns that her baby has Down Syndrome, she is often overcome with fear of the future. There are fears about what the child’s life will look like as well as what medical conditions there may be to overcome. We also worry about the life expectancy of someone who has Down Syndrome as moms tend to worry. So, What is the Down Syndrome Life Expectancy?
Well, if you look at the history in many developed countries you may be discouraged, however, the times they are changing. Historically, Down Syndrome Life Expectancy was short. There are a lot of reasons for that including lack of health screening tests, medical procedures we can now perform, and medications that now often alleviate health problems. If you look at the timeline provided by Global Down Syndrome Association you can see the evolution of this trend.
“In 1929 the life expectancy was 9 years”
“In 1946 it was 12 years”
“in the 1970s it was 25 years”
“In 1997 it was 49 years”
Today the Down Syndrome Life Expectancy is 60 years plus with good medical management.
You can make sense of the upward trend like this, heart abnormalities are found in approximately 60% of all individuals with Down Syndrome. In times past, these heart defects caused a shortened life expectancy of only a few years, but now, with modern technology, many of these children are able to have life-saving heart surgeries performed so that they can grow and develop normally.
More Information about Down Syndrome 101
Doctors now typically screen all newborns identified as having Trisomy 21 or Down Syndrome for heart abnormalities. This is done in prenatal screenings through high-level ultrasounds and at birth through a painless echocardiogram that allows technicians a view of the heart, its chambers and interworkings. Doctors now can put an action plan into place almost immediately so that these babies get medical intervention that will allow them to grow and turn into rambunctious toddlers and fun loving children who grow into teens and young adults. This means that the down syndrome life expectancy increases.
As there are other health-related issues that can often go hand in hand with a Down Syndrome Diagnosis, proper medical screening has become somewhat of a norm. This too has contributed to an increased Down Syndrome Life Expectancy.
Related Stories of Heart Surgery Successes
Since 50 years or more ago, there was a shorter Down Syndrome Life Expectancy you can see that it was often because of poor medical management and lack of knowledge. One other major factor was also the treatment of individuals with Down Syndrome. There was a time just 45 years ago that most mothers who gave birth were told to immediately institutionalize their babies. When they gave into this pressure you then saw children being raised in orphanage type institutional conditions where they were not growing and thriving like we see now. There was a turn of the tide in the 1970’s when people began using early intervention strategies and realizing that, when given the opportunity, individuals with Down Syndrome could grow and function much like their typical counterparts, just at a slower rate.
It is believed that as we move forward with those individuals that have been born in the last 15-20 years we will see an even larger increase in the Down Syndrome Life Expectancy.
The increase in medical screenings and monitoring have been the best tool for increasing Down Syndrome Life Expectancy over the last 100 years and we can only predict that it will continue to improve as more technology becomes available.
or the 
a travel playmat like the 
or the caterpillar which was one of our absolute favorite toys to use for prop sitting!
monitor is that it is unable to be hacked as it is a closed circuit monitor so no worries about computer hackers intercepting your baby monitor.
(this is the one we use)
babies who will be diagnosed with Down Syndrome. The extra genetic material affects each person differently. Some individuals will function very well with no health issues to speak of and the ability to function cognitively very well. Some individuals will have more affects with their physical makeup such as heart issues, intestinal tract difficulties, and other motor and cognitive abilities.
The last of the types of Down Syndrome is Mosiac. In Mosiac Down Syndrome, only some of the person’s 21st set of chromosomes are in triplicate and others are completely unaffected. In the microscopic world some samples of the chromosomes in a karyotype test will look like typical children and others will be affected by the presence of a 21st chromosome.
