Prevalence of congenital heart defects in assigned children for intercountry adoption.

Abstract

Worldwide, congenital anomalies are a leading cause of foetal death, infant mortality, and morbidity in childhood. According to the European Surveillance of Congenital Anomalies (EUROCAT), of the 5.1 million births in the European Union each year ∼2.5% have a congenital anomaly. EUROCAT is a European network of population-based registries for the epidemiologic surveillance of congenital anomalies, which was established in 1979. Since 2015, the EUROCAT Central Registry is operated by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (Ispra, Italy), as part of the European Platform on Rare Diseases Registration.1 Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are the most frequent group of congenital anomalies accounting for nearly one-third of babies with major congenital anomalies diagnosed prenatally or in infancy in Europe. The spectrum ranges from complex cardiac anomalies with high mortality to small innocent septal defects. According to EUROCAT data, the prevalence of CHDs in live birth without genetic anomalies in Europe during...