Search

The marriage-to-conception interval in 151 pregnancies producing infants with anencephaly or spina bifida was not significantly different from that in 218 pregnancies resulting in normal infants. Significantly more miscarriages occurred before than after the birth of 285 infants with anencephaly or spina bifida, but in 133 controls no before-after difference was observed. These observations seem to favour the idea that miscarriages are a manifestation rather than a cause of anencephaly and spina bifida.

Just over half of the sixty women who were interviewed ten and twenty years after they were delivered of a stillborn malformed baby, seem to have resolved their grief completely and have accepted the stillbirth. The remainder have become clinically depressed or have shown physical symptoms typical of anxiety states. Factors contributing to their unresolved mourning were: 1) failure on the doctor's part to explain, comprehensively, the reason for the stillbirth; 2) lack of emotional support during and after the stillbirth.

Altogether 406 infants with neural tube defects born in Cardiff between 1956-71 were investigated for evidence of space-time clustering and 100 similarly affected infants, together with matched controls born in Cardiff between 1964-66 were investigated for evidence of spatial clustering. No evidence of excessive prevalence in either dimension was observed.