Mortality and Maldevelopment

Harold Kalter

ISBN 10: 9048181682 / ISBN 13: 9789048181681

Published by Springer, 2010

About this Item

pp. 280.

Seller Inventory # 263078633

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mortality and Maldevelopment
• Publisher: Springer
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9048181682
• ISBN 13: 9789048181681
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Congenital malformations are worldwide occurrences striking in every condition of society. These severe physical abnormalities which are present at birth and affecting every part of the body happen more often than usually realized, once in every 33 births. The most common, after heart defects, are those of the neural tube (the brain and spinal cord) which happen in as many as one in every 350 births. They have been noted as curiousities in man and beast throughout recorded history and received great attention in our time by various fields of study, for example, their faulty prenatal development by embryologists, familial patterns by geneticists, causation by environmentalists and variability by population scientists.

Attention turned much in recent years to the relation of these malformations to deficiency of a particular dietary ingredient, folic acid, a subject this book analyzes in depth. The greatest conundrum of all, which this latest matter like so much else hinges on, is the amazing fact of the tremendous, almost universal decrease in the frequency of these anomalies since early in the 20th century. The puzzle is ‘What can this downward trend possibly mean?’ and at bottom ‘Whether it is part of a long-term cyclical pattern’. This fascinating biological phenomenon is explored in the book together with various other topics.

Review

From the reviews:

"This is an epidemiologist’s approach to congenital malformations of the heart which relates those malformations to infant and perinatal mortality. ... It is written for anyone who cares for patients with congenital heart disease: pediatric cardiologists, adult congenital heart disease practitioners, nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists. It is really written for everyone in the entire field of congenital heart disease." (Douglas Moodie, Doody's Book Review, October, 2007)