Prevalence of Congenital Anomalies in Newborns in Zabol: ASingle Hospital Based Study

Congenital anomalies are conditions of prenatal origin that arepresent at birth, potentially impacting an infant's health, development and survival. The birth of a newborn with congenital anomalies imposes financial and emotional burdens on families. The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiology of congenital anomalies in 2014 in Zabol, Iran.

This cross-sectional study was carried out in the AmirAl-Momenin Hospital between May of 2013 and April 2014. All the live born were included, and we have examined all newborns for the presence of congenital anomalies.

During the twelve months, 9,309 newbornswere included to the study. Of them,72 (0.8%) newborns were affected with a congenital malformation. The congenital anomalies affected significantly higher proportion of male newborns(66.7%) than female newborns (33.3%).Among Of them, musculoskeletal system abnormalities account for 45.9% of the total abnormalities allocating the highest frequency to itself. Subsequently, central nervous system abnormality (19.4%), gastrointestinal anomaly (15.3%), urinary tract abnormality (9.7%), chromosomal abnormality (2.8%), and multiple anomalies (1.4%) were frequent, respectively.

This study showed that prevalence of congenital anomalies isrelativelyhigh in Zabol city.The results of this study identify the necessity ofgenetic counseling and early diagnosisto prevention, care and surveillance.