Oesophageal atresia: prevalence, prenatal diagnosis and associated anomalies in 23 European regions

Pedersen, Rikke Neess, Calzolari, Elisa, Husby, Steffan, Garne, Ester and Wellesley, D. , EUROCAT Working Group (2012) Oesophageal atresia: prevalence, prenatal diagnosis and associated anomalies in 23 European regions. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 97 (3), 227-232. (doi:10.1136/archdischild-2011-300597). (PMID:22247246)

Abstract

Objective. To describe prevalence, prenatal diagnosis and epidemiological data on oesophageal atresia from 23 well-defined European regions and compare the prevalence between these regions.

Design. Population-based study using data from a large European database for surveillance of congenital anomalies (EUROCAT) for two decades (1987–2006).

Settings. Twenty-three participating registries based on multiple sources of information including information about live births, fetal deaths with gestational age ?20 weeks and terminations of pregnancy.

Patients. 1222 cases of oesophageal atresia in a population of 5019804 births.

Results. The overall prevalence was 2.43 cases per 10 000 births (95% CI 2.30 to 2.57). There were regional differences in prevalence ranging from 1.27 to 4.55. Prenatal detection rates varied by registry from >50% of cases to <10% of cases. A total of 546 cases (44.7%) had an isolated oesophageal anomaly, 386 (31.6%) were multiple malformed and 290 (23.7%) had an association or a syndrome. There were 1084 live born cases (88.7%), 43 cases were fetal deaths and 95 cases were terminations of pregnancy. One-week survival for live births was 86.9% and 99.2% if the gestational age was ?38 weeks and isolated oesophageal atresia was present. Males accounted for 57.3% of all cases and 38.5% of live born cases were born with gestational age <37 weeks.

Conclusion. There were regional differences in prevalence of oesophageal atresia in Europe. Half of all cases had associated anomalies. Prenatal detection rate increased from 26% to 36.5% over the two decades. Survival in infants with isolated oesophageal atresia born at term is high.

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