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.
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:
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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)