Prevalence of congenital birth defects in the Northern Region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: an evaluation through life birth notifications (1999 to 2005)

• Autor(a) principal: Falleiro, Luciana Vilar
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Medina-Acosta, Enrique
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Científica da Faculdade de Medicina de Campos
• Texto Completo: https://www.fmc.br/ojs/index.php/RCFMC/article/view/137
• topic: idade materna; malformação congênita; prevalência; SINASC; birth defects; congenital defe; congenital defects; maternal age; prevalence; SINASC

Introduction: Birth defects constitute simple or multiple alterations of structure, function and/or metabolism that result in physical or mental disabilities, the leading causes of child morbidity and mortality worldwide. Its etiology is diverse and it may or not be genetic. In Brazil, approximately 2 to 3% of all live births are affected by some type of malformation. Nevertheless, variations by gender, ethnicity and place of residence up to 8% have been reported. Objectives: To evaluate the occurrence of birth defects in the Northern Region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which comprises nine municipalities: Campos dos Goytacazes, Macaé, São João da Barra, Conceição de Macabu, São Francisco de Itabapoana, Quissamã, São Fidélis, Carapebus, Cardoso Moreira. Methods: Information was for the year period 1999-2005 from the Live Birth Information Notification System, SINASC. Frequencies were calculated for the variables: municipality, year of notification, category of system affected, maternal age and affected gender. Results: Considering the category of system affected, year of notification and municipality, the cumulative number of notified birth defects was 425. Distributed by affected gender and maternal age, there were 440 notifications, without significant differences (Student t-test p = 0.2181). Prevalence of notified birth defects was 47/10,000 live births (mean annual frequency 0.46% ± 0.11%). The rate of birth defects in males (0.54) was higher than in females (0.46), but not significantly different from the expected values (c2 test pmales =0.7180; pfemales p = 0.5956). The most frequent birth defects involved the central nervous system (21% of all birth defects; 0.097% of all live births) and the musculoskeletal system (20.5% of all birth defects; 0.095% of all live births). The majority (63%) of affected children were born to women aged 20-34 years and the least (9.7%) to mothers aged 35-44 years. The majority of affected children were born in Campos dos Goytacazes (64%) and the least (0.7%) in Cardoso Moreira. Conclusions: The prevalence of birth defects for the Northern Region of the State is approximately half the rates reported by other studies in Brazil, including the city of Rio de Janeiro. Given that the distribution of all live births in the Northern Region of the State is indistinguishable from the National mean birth rates per maternal age distribution, the data point to a significant sub notification for the interior of the State.