Maternal age and malformations in singleton births
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Parkland Health and Hospital System is a public institution that serves women primarily of Dallas County. The obstetric service is staffed by residents, fellows, and faculty of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas. Our 7-year study of singleton births included calendar years 1988 through 1994. The start date coincided with the incorporation of maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) screening with other prenatal
Results
From 1988 to 1994, 102,728 singleton pregnancies met inclusion criteria and were analyzed. As shown in Table 1, those included 101,198 live infants who weighed more than 500 g. Among those, 3466 (3%) had structural malformations not caused by chromosomal abnormalities and 155 had abnormal karyotypes. There were 829 stillbirths during that period, 104 (12%) with at least one malformation and 16 with confirmed abnormal karyotypes. Another 701 women had spontaneous or induced second-trimester
Discussion
Our analysis offers at least three important findings about congenital malformations. We confirmed the well-known association of increased maternal age with chromosomal aberrations, especially aneuploidies. Also, women who were 25 years of age or older at delivery had significantly and progressively greater risk of having fetuses with nonchromosomal malformations compared with women 20–24 years old. By age 35 years, the additional age-related risk of having infants with nonchromosomal
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