Congenital Abnormalities

House of Lords written question – answered at on 6 January 2015.

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Photo of Lord Rooker Lord Rooker Labour

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many births have been affected by neural tube defects in the past five years.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many pregnancies have been terminated in the past five years because of neural tube defects.

Photo of Earl Howe Earl Howe The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health

Based on HSA4 notifications to the Chief Medical Officer, the numbers of abortions for neural tube defect reported as the primary medical condition of the fetus, residents of England and Wales, 2009 to 2013 are:

2013 420
2012 390
2011 364
2010 338
2009 299

ICD_10 Codes included are: Q00 Anencephaly, Q01 Encephalocele and Q05 Spina Bifida.

The data below has been captured from EUROCAT, a European network of population-based registries for the epidemiologic surveillance of congenital anomalies. The data covers approximately 30% of the population. The table below represents data from seven registries that are based in England.

Number of cases of neural tube defects, for the following registries:

East Midlands and South Yorkshire (UK),

Merseyside and Cheshire (UK),

North West Thames (UK),

Northern England (UK),

South West England (UK),

Thames Valley (UK),

Wessex (UK),

From 2008-2012
Number of cases
Registries Anomaly2 Year Live Births Fetal Deaths/Still Births from Fetal Anomaly Total
2008 47 4 51
2009 47 9 56
2010 52 8 60
2011 40 11 51
2012 46 14 60
Total1 Neural Tube Defects 2008 - 2012 232 46 278

Notes:

1

Data is not available for the following years/registries:

UK Merseyside and Cheshire (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)

North West Thames (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)

The years data is available for each registry and can be found here:

http://www.eurocat-network.eu/content/EUROCAT-Population-Table-I.pdf

2

The number of cases in each congenital anomaly subgroup is not the number of isolated cases. In particular the outcome, such as fetal deaths for seemingly less severe anomalies, may have occurred as the case had other more severe major anomalies.

Source:

EUROCAT Website Database:

http://www.eurocat-network.eu/ACCESSPREVALENCE DATA/PrevalenceTables

(data uploaded 24 November 2014)

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