Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Commentary: major defects are overestimated

1997; BMJ; Volume: 315; Issue: 7118 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/bmj.315.7118.1265

0959-8138

M Bonduelle, Paul Devroey, I. Liebærs, A. Van Steirteghem,

Congenital Anomalies and Fetal Surgery

After reclassification of birth defects according to the system used by the Western Australian Birth Defects Registry, Kurinczuk and Bower's reanalysis of our data suggests that the 420 live born infants conceived by intracytoplasmic sperm injection were twice as likely to have a major birth defect as the general population of Western Australia. This result is considered unlikely to be due to chance. For the cardiac malformations in particular, we think that the authors overestimate the number of major malformations. They do not take into account the fact that these malformations were found as part of an ultrasound research screening programme for the infants conceived by intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Kurinczuk and Bower made conservative estimates about the patent ductus arteriosus in six children, since we had given insufficient information to determine whether they should be included as major defects according to Australian criteria. In fact, …