To collect data on birth defects, trained MACDP records abstractors visit birth and pediatric hospitals and genetic laboratories to review in-patient medical records of infants and fetuses of [greater than or equal to] 20 weeks' gestation.
For MACDP purposes, prevalence is defined as the number of infants and fetuses with a major birth defect that were delivered during a specified period divided by the number of live births during that period.
Second, the specific defect inclusion and exclusion criteria used by MACDP might differ from those used by other surveillance programs, resulting in differences in prevalence estimates (10).
This report is based, in part, on contributions by J Kucik, C Alverson, S Gilboa, D Gambrell, and MACDP abstractors and staff members, Div Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC.
To determine whether personnel completing birth certificates could have used medical record review to determine an infant's FAS status, the date of diagnosis reported in the MACDP file was compared with the date of birth.
From 1989 through 1992, MACDP identified 35 FAS cases (overall rate: 2.
Diagnostic information for this report is grouped into 44 categories on the basis of a classification system developed at the MACDP.
The ratio of the prevalence for the MACDP compared to the CBDMP in each defect category was also estimated.
Conversely, the prevalence for spina bifida and encephalocele among blacks was higher in the MACDP than in the CBDMP.