Prevalence of congenital abnormalities in Turkish school children

Abstract

19750 school children, ages 6 to 15 years, were examined by the authors of this study, 1,220 (6.18%) had congenital abnormalities. In this group, 4.23% were boys and 1.88% were girls. Case histories revealed inbreeding amongst the parents (families) of children with congenital malformation to be 8.9% and 8.2% for the rest of the families in this study. There were 27 different congenital abnormalities identified, with prevalence rates of 0.05/1,000 to 15.85/1,000. The most prevalent abnormalities were umbilical hernia (15.85/1000), inguinal hernia (14.50/1,000), pectus carinatum and excavatum (7.68/1,000), undescended testes (9.00/1,000 boys), congenital nevus (3.54/1,000), retractile testis (4.45/1,000 boys), pilonidal sinus (2.63/1,000), pes planus (2.28/1,000), and hemangioma (1.16/1,000). Of the 19,750 children, 70 had multiple anomalies (3.75/1,000).