Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T13:55:55.142Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Errors in Birth Registrations and Coding of Twins and Higher Order Multiples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2012

Peter O.D. Pharoah*
Affiliation:
FSID Unit of Perinatal and Paediatric Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. [email protected]
*
*Address for correspondence: Peter O.D. Pharoah, FSID Unit of Perinatal and Paediatric Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GB, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Dizygotic compared with monozygotic conceptions are at decreased risk of fetal and infant death and serious morbidity in surviving infants. Different sex twin maternities must be dizygotic but miscoding and incorrect registration of sex and number of fetuses may lead to an incorrect assignment of zygosity. The aim of the study was to validate the coding and registration of number and sex of births in multiple pregnancies. Fetal and infant death registrations from all multiple maternities in England and Wales 1993–1998 were examined. There were 51,792 twin, 1627 triplet and 51 higher order multiple maternities that were registered. Among these there were 1926 fetal deaths, 58 of which were registered as being of indeterminate sex but were coded as male in 56 and female in 2 cases. A fetus papyraceous was registered as male in 19 and as female in 19 cases. Other fetal deaths weighing ≤100g, with no mention of papyraceous on the death certificate, nevertheless, likely to be of indeterminate sex, were registered as male in 26 and as female in 23 cases. In 13 maternities, the number of infants registered at birth was less than the number mentioned on the registration certificate. It cannot be assumed that multiple births of different registered sex are dizygotic. As surviving infants from a monozygotic multiple birth are at much greater risk of infant death and serious morbidity than dizygotic multiple births, incorrect assignment of sex has important implications for parental counselling and may have medicolegal relevance when attributing negligence as the cause of morbidity in a survivor from a multiple pregnancy.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002