followed by anencephaly (31.6%), and encephalocele (11.6%). More neural tube defects were observed in female and low birth weight babies, still births and ...
Original Article
Neural Tube Defects in Pondicherry B. Mahadevan and B. Vishnu Bhat Department of Pediatrics, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Pondicherry, India.
Abstract. Objective : This study was carried out to identify the trend and the frequency of neural tube defects from July 1998 to June 2004. Methods : A total of 310 babies were born with neural tube defects with the overall frequency of 5.7/1000 births compared to 2.3/1000 births observed earlier in our hospital. Results : The most common defect was spina bifida (54.8%) followed by anencephaly (31.6%), and encephalocele (11.6%). More neural tube defects were observed in female and low birth weight babies, still births and unbooked mothers. Neural tube defect was significantly higher among babies born to parents of consanguineous marriage (p0.1). In the present study, spina bifida was the most common type of neural tube defect 8.0
Incidence (per 1000 births)
Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) are the most common of the central nervous system malformations and the burden of the disease is very high in low socioeconomic countries like India. The incidence of NTDs varies from 0.5 to 11 per 1000 births in different parts of India. 1, 2 Previous studies reported higher incidence from northern part of India (3.9-10/1000)3, 4 compared to other parts (0.5-2.64/ 1000)1 with an exception from Davangere, 5 Karnataka. There is not enough data on the trend and the frequency of neural tube defects in Southern India. Hence, the present study was aimed to ascertain the trend, frequency and maternal-child characteristics of NTDs in a Pondicherry hospital.
7.0 6.0 5.0 1998-2004 4.0 t
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Fig. 1. Comparative trend of neural tube defects
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B. Mahadevan and B. Vishnu Bhat (54.8%) followed by anencephaly (31.6%), encephalocele (11.6%), and craniorachischisis (0.6%). (Table 1) Two hundred and seventy-five babies (88.7%) had single defect and remaining had combined defects. There were no NTDs observed among the siblings of the cases. Of the maternal characteristics hydramnios was noted in fortytwo (13.5%) mothers of babies born with NTDs. Table 2 shows maternal and child characteristics observed among the babies born to mothers with and without neural tube defects. Among them 17 (40.4%) were anencephaly babies. Only ninety-two (29.7%) were booked mothers, the remaining were unbooked (70.3%). Among the other maternal characteristics, ages between 21-30 years, teenage pregnancies and advanced age (>30 years) constitute 80%, 14%, 6% of babies with NTDs respectively. One hundred and twenty-six (40.6%) babies with NTDs were born to primi mothers. Forty-three percent babies were born to consanguineous parents. The frequency of NTDs among consanguineous parents were 10.3/1000 births compared to 4.2/1000 births among nonconsanguineous parents (p
