Abortion: Neural Tube Defects

(asked on 16th December 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

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


Answered by
Earl Howe Portrait
Earl Howe
Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
This question was answered on 31st December 2014

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

Total1

Neural Tube Defects

2008

47

4

51

2009

47

9

56

2010

52

8

60

2011

40

11

51

2012

46

14

60

2008 - 2012

232

46

278

Notes:

1Data 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

2The 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/ACCESSPREVALENCEDATA/PrevalenceTables

(data uploaded 24 November 2014)

Reticulating Splines