Epidemiologic characteristics of conotruncal heart defects in California, 1987-1988

In this population-based case-control study, we explored the association of selected parental and infant characteristics from the birth certificates of children with conotruncal heart defects. We compared 252 cases to a random sample of 5,000 nonmalformed infants from a cohort of 341,839 California live births for 1987-1988. The prevalence of conotruncal defects was 0.732 per 1,000 total births. A decreased risk (OR = 0.55, 95% CI0.33-0.89) for delivering infants with conotruncal defects was found among mothers born in Mexico compared to mothers born in California. An increased risk was observed for Native American mothers compared to non-Hispanic whites (OR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.1-6.0). We also compared risks associated with the individual diagnoses that comprise the group of conotruncal defects. Only minor differences in risk estimates between the anatomic diagnoses were observed, lending support to the methodologic approach of using conotruncal defects as a single category of heart defects in etiologic investigations.