NCARDRS Congenital Condition Official Statistics Report, 2023

Birth prevalence describes the occurrence of congenital conditions and is used to quantify the proportion of babies born with these conditions in a population in a year.  See the  Technical Details for the formulae used in this report to calculate prevalence. 

Total birth prevalence  and  live birth prevalence are the two most frequently used measures to describe congenital conditions. 

Although we have presented restated counts and rates for previous years (2018 - 2022) in this report, any comparison that is made between rates or counts in 2023 and the previous year compares against the initial counts and rates that were reported in that Official Statistics report.  This ensures that the comparison is fair and not affected by the additional time the previous year has had to accumulate more cases.   

Total birth prevalence is defined as the total number of babies with at least one congenital condition occurring in all  pregnancy outcomes  (live births, stillbirths, late miscarriages between 20-23 complete weeks, terminations at any gestation and not known birth outcome) per 10,000 live births and stillbirths (total births).  

Data table 1a  shows that a total of 14,087 babies delivered in 2023 had one or more congenital conditions out of 565,457  total births in England. This gives a total birth prevalence of babies with congenital conditions of 249.1 per 10,000 total births (95%  confidence intervals (CI) 245.0-253.3). This means that one baby was diagnosed with a congenital condition for every 40 total births. 

Live birth prevalence is the total number of babies with at least one congenital condition occurring in live births per 10,000 live births. In 2023, 10,271 babies with at least one congenital condition were born alive, giving a live birth prevalence of 182.4 per 10,000 live births (95% CI 178.9-185.9). This means that one baby was diagnosed with a congenital condition for every 55 live births. 

Both total and live birth prevalence in 2023 were lower than those reported in the Official Statistics for 2022. Total prevalence per 10,000 total births was 249.1 (95% CI 245.0-253.3) in 2023 compared with 255.0 (95% CI 250.9-259.1) in 2022, as reported at the time; live birth prevalence per 10,000 live births in 2023 was 182.4 (95% CI 178.9-185.9) and 188.1 (95% CI 184.6-191.7) in the 2022 report.