Smoking and alcohol drinking during pregnancy. The reliability of retrospective maternal self-reported information

The reliability of retrospective maternal self-reported information regarding smoking and alcohol drinking during pregnancy seemed necessary to be checked.

Two groups of congenital abnormalities were selected for the study from the population based Hungarian Congenital Abnormality Registry. The prevalence of smoking and drinking during the study pregnancy was measured in the mothers of 81 cases affected with isolated orofacial cleft and 537 cases with congenital limb deficiencies, and in their matched control pairs without any defect by maternal self-reported retrospective information through a mailed structured questionnaire. In the second step the latter data were checked by an independent personal interview of fathers and other family members at the home visit or in our department using the same structured questionnaire.

The family consensus indicated the low reliability of retrospective maternal self-reported information concerning smoking in the mothers of cases but not in mothers of controls. However, the comparison of retrospective maternal self-reported data and information of close relatives indicated a reported bias concerning the drinking of alcohol beverages during pregnancy in both controls and cases.

Since retrospective maternal self-reported data had low reliability, therefore, data of smoking and alcohol drinking were not collected for the data set of the Hungarian Case-Control Surveillance of Congenital Abnormalities between 1980 and 1996.