Ten-Year Survival of Children With Congenital Anomalies: A European Cohort Study

Abstract

OBJECTIVES To investigate the survival up to age 10 for children born alive with a major congenital anomaly (CA). METHODS This population-based linked cohort study (EUROlinkCAT) linked data on live births from 2005 to 2014 from 13 European CA registries with mortality data. Pooled Kaplan-Meier survival estimates up to age 10 were calculated for these children (77 054 children with isolated structural anomalies and 4011 children with Down syndrome). RESULTS The highest mortality of children with isolated structural CAs was within infancy, with survival of 97.3% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 96.6%–98.1%) and 96.9% (95% CI: 96.0%–97.7%) at age 1 and 10, respectively. The 10-year survival exceeded 90% for the majority of specific CAs (27 of 32), with considerable variations between CAs of different severity. Survival of children with a specific isolated anomaly was higher than in all children with the same anomaly when those with associated anomalies were included. For children with Down syndrome, the 10-year survival was significantly higher for those without associated cardiac or digestive system anomalies (97.6%; 95% CI: 96.5%–98.7%) compared with children with Down syndrome associated with a cardiac anomaly (92.3%; 95% CI: 89.4%–95.3%), digestive system anomaly (92.8%; 95% CI: 87.7%–98.2%), or both (88.6%; 95% CI: 83.2%–94.3%). CONCLUSIONS Ten-year survival of children born with congenital anomalies in Western Europe from 2005 to 2014 was relatively high. Reliable information on long-term survival of children born with specific CAs is of major importance for parents of these children and for the health care professionals involved in their care.