NCARDRS Congenital Anomaly Official Statistics Report, 2020

As shown in Table 2.1, of the 13,065 babies with one or more congenital anomaly, the majority (9,763, 74.7%) resulted in a live birth. Of the remaining 3,302 babies, 219 (1.7%) were stillbirths (24 and over complete weeks gestation), 91 (0.7%) were late miscarriages (20 to 23 complete weeks gestation) and 2992 (22.9%) were terminations of pregnancy at any gestation. Throughout the report, termination describes terminations of pregnancy at any gestation for any reason where a fetal anomaly was present.

For pregnancies with Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome there are some differences in the proportion of different birth outcomes across different regions. The proportion of pregnancies with these conditions that resulted in a live birth ranged from 30.3% in the East of England to 52.2% in the Northern region (Figure 4; Data table 3). There are likely to be several reasons behind this, including differences in the population, differences in maternal age and uptake of screening. There may also be some regional variation in ascertainment and data completeness, which could underestimate the number of miscarriages and terminations.

Figure 4: Outcome of pregnancy for babies with Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome delivered in 2020, by NCARDRS region.