Renowned gynaecologist and genetics expert Dr Dipanker Banerjee said that there are more than 4,000 different kinds of structural, functional and metabolic birth defects, ranging from minor ones that need no treatment to serious ones that cause disabilities or require medical or surgical treatment.
Dr Banerjee, who was in the city to attend a doctors’ conference on Test Tube Baby Technology as main speaker while addressing a press conference on Sunday, said, “Congenital heart defect, club foot, down syndrome, cerebral palsy and spina bifida are some of the common defects. Besides these defects, there are some chronic diseases such as thelsemia and sickle cell anemia, which may affect unborn child. Seventy percent of birth defects are preventable. These defects can be diagnosed through various prenatal tests.”
Dr Banerjee said while still in the womb, some babies have problems with how their organs and body parts form, how they work, or how their bodies turn food into energy. Carrier screening and prenatal screening are proven strategies to detect birth defects. According to March of Dimes (MOD) Global Report on Birth Defects, worldwide 7.9 million births occur annually with serious birth defects and 94% of these births occur in the middle and low income countries, he added.
According to joint World Health Organisation (WHO) and MOD meeting report, birth defects account for 7% of all neonatal mortality and 3.3 million under five deaths. In India, birth defects prevalence varies from 61 to 69.9/1000 live births.
He further said that in the routine checkup, it is difficult to detect chronic diseases, it requires more detailed investigation of blood, body tissue, amionetic fluid and a high resolution ultrasound. These investigations are usually done in between 12-20 weeks of pregnancy. An ultrasound creates pictures of the baby.
This ultrasound, also known as a level II ultrasound, is used to look in more detail for possible birth defects or other problems with the baby that were suggested in the previous screening tests. In our centre, we are using 4-D sonography machine to do the prenatal targeted sonography to see various birth defects.