Elsevier

Public Health

Volume 101, Issue 3, May 1987, Pages 191-197
Public Health

Uses and limitations of registers of congenital malformations: A case-study

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0033-3506(87)80067-7Get rights and content

Following the thalidomide disaster, congenital malformation registers were established in various parts of the world. The Glasgow Register had four principal objectives: to detect epidemics, to calculate prevalence rates, to facilitate the epidemiological investigation of selected malformations and to identify the needs of cohorts of survivors. Since its inception in 1972, the Register has fulfilled several useful functions for which alternative data sources would have been inadequate, including the generation of prevalence rates, the provision of data for ad hoc studies and an epidemiologically-based means of monitoring the impact of ante-natal screening for neural-tube defects. In common with other registers, it appears to have failed to detect epidemics, but this may be due to an absence of epidemics. The major limitation of the Register is probably its lack of power for the epidemiological analysis of rare defects within a relatively small population at risk; this problem should be solved by its participation in the multi-centre EUROCAT project.

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