THE EUROPEAN SURVEILLANCE of Congenital Abnormalities (Eurocat) has said that recent media reports about the alleged abortion of foetuses over the detection of minor abnormalities, such as cleft palates, are incorrect.
Media reports on Sunday cited Eurocat figures that they claimed showed 157 foetuses were aborted due to the detection of cleft lips and palates in England and Wales between 2006 and 2010, and a further 205 abortions were carried out due to the discovery of club foot. Official figures from the UK’s Department of Health related to terminations carried out due to such minor abnormalities are much lower.
However, a spokesperson for Eurocat – a network of population-based registries for the epidemiological surveillance of congenital anomalies in 23 European countries - indicated to TheJournal.ie that the prevalence figures had been interpreted incorrectly, stating:
The number of cleft palate cases is not the number of isolated cleft palate cases. It is the number of isolated, multiple, syndromic, plus or minus chromosomal cleft palate cases.
The website tables do not currently show the number of isolated cases for any congenital anomaly subgroup. Thus, we cannot tell from the website tables if a termination of pregnancy was for an isolated cleft palate or if the cleft palate case also had a more severe anomaly such as HLH (hypoplastic left heart) and the termination of pregnancy was performed because of the HLH.
The spokesperson explained that the tables give the number and prevalence of congenital anomaly subgroups both including and excluding chromosomal anomalies – in other words, “if a case has a cleft palate and Down syndrome, this case will be counted in the overall total cleft palate cases, but it will not be counted in the total cleft palate cases excluding chromosomal anomalies”.
A case with multiple anomalies will be counted in more than one subgroup, ie prevalence rates and counts for subgroups are based on cases, not malformations. Thus a baby with a hypoplastic left heart (HLH) and a cleft palate and will be counted once in the “All anomalies subgroup”, once in the “congenital heart defects (CHD) subgroup”, once in “severe CHD”, once in “HLH”, once in “orofacial clefts and once in ”cleft palate”.
The number of cases in different subgroups cannot be added together to find the total number of cases, as one case can be counted in more than one subgroup, according to the spokesperson.
According to Eurocat: “The total prevalence of cleft palate is 5.77 per 10,000 births; the termination of pregnancy prevalence is 0.33 per 10,000 births. Excluding chromosomal anomalies, the total prevalence of cleft palate is 5.44 per 10,000 births; the termination of pregnancy prevalence is 0.21 per 10,000 births.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say