NCARDRS Congenital Condition Official Statistics Report, 2022

Some congenital conditions are detectable during pregnancy and others are not. Screening is offered by NHS maternity services to maximise antenatal detection of specified conditions where pregnant people choose and present in time. NCARDRS works with the NHS Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme (FASP) to monitor the performance of this screening.

NCARDRS recognises that those who are pregnant make a personal informed decision whether to have fetal condition screening or not. The diagnosis of a condition as early as possible in the pregnancy gives families greater choice about their pregnancy and enables better planning for the delivery of babies where specialist intervention or palliative care may be required soon after birth.

In pages 9 to 11, conditions are reported by timing of detection and timing of confirmation. Timing of detection is defined as when a condition is first suspected. Timing of confirmation reflects the diagnosis using a genomic test and is confined to Down’s syndrome, Edwards' syndrome and Patau’s syndrome.

The method used to calculate whether a baby or condition was identified antenatally or postnatally was updated this year to improve accuracy and so values presented in this report are not directly comparable with previous reports. This change has resulted in an increase in the number of babies with an unknown timing of diagnosis compared to previous year’s reports.