J. Reefhuis et al., Additional information from parental questionnaires and pharmacy records for registration of birth defects, EUR J EPID, 16(4), 2000, pp. 329-336
Citations number
8
Categorie Soggetti
Envirnomentale Medicine & Public Health","Medical Research General Topics
EUROCAT Northern Netherlands registers children born with a birth defect in
the Northern Netherlands. Data used to be collected via a notification for
m, which is filled out by the notifier and, if necessary, completed by the
general practitioner. To increase the amount of information, EUROCAT starte
d using new methodology in July 1997. The new procedure consists of three a
dditional steps. Firstly, a parental questionnaire with 43 questions concer
ning pregnancy and medical history is sent to the parents. Also, the pharma
cist is approached to provide information on the drugs that were dispensed
to the mother in the period from three months before until the end of the p
regnancy. The last step is a telephone interview with the mother. In this s
tudy the old and new method are compared with respect to response, quality
and quantity of the data. Of the 198 parental questionnaires included in th
is study, 179 (90.4%) were returned. The pharmacists returned 173 out of 17
9 requests for information (96.6%). The parental information is more comple
te for ethnicity and serum screening. The quality of the drug exposure data
is much better using the new methodology. The general practitioner's input
is still necessary for specification and verification of the diagnosis.