NCARDRS Congenital Condition Official Statistics Report, 2023

As shown in Table A below, of the 14,087 babies with one or more congenital conditions, the majority (10,271, 72.9%) resulted in a live birth. Of the remaining 3,816 babies, 186 (1.3%) were stillbirths (24 and over completed weeks of gestation), 68 (0.5%) were late miscarriages (20-23 weeks completed weeks of gestation) and 3,551 (25.2%) were terminations of pregnancy at any gestation. Further information on birth outcome is available in Data tables 1a to 1c and 2a. 

In this report, terminations of pregnancy represent terminations at any gestation for any reason, where a congenital condition was present. This group will include terminations for fetal anomaly (TOPFA), i.e. those carried out under Category E of the Abortion Act 1967, but it will also include terminations for other grounds. NCARDRS is not notified as to the reason for any termination, just that it has taken place.  

We were unable to determine the pregnancy outcome for 11 babies (0.1%) with a congenital condition that had exceeded 20 weeks’ gestation. 

The proportion of pregnancies with any congenital condition resulting in a live birth ranged from 70% in London to 77.4% in the North East (Figure 3a; Data table 2a). There are likely to be several reasons behind this, including differences in the demographic composition of the population, such as differences in the age at delivery, choices around screening and pregnancy. There may also be some regional variation in ascertainment and data completeness, which could underestimate the number of miscarriages and terminations. 

For likely the same reasons, there were some clear regional differences in the proportion of different birth outcomes across regions for pregnancies with at least one of  Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome. The proportion of pregnancies with these conditions that resulted in a live birth ranged from 24.9% in the London to 42.6% in the West Midlands (Figure 3b; Data table 2b). The proportion of pregnancies with at least one trisomy that ended in a still birth varied from 1.4% in East of England and the East Midlands to 6.8% (4 out of 277 total babies with a trisomy) in the North East, although this represented 4 out of 59 births with a trisomy.