Incidence of Congenital Heart Disease in Singapore

The diagnosis, and in many centres the surgical correction, of congenital heart disease is now commonplace. Several large series, both clinical and post-mortem, reporting the relative incidence of the various cardiac anomalies have now been published. Further, attempts have been made to estimate the absolute incidence of such anomalies in given populations, e.g. McMahon et al. (1953) in Birmingham and Carlgren (1959) in Gothenburg. Such data, in the main, relate to temperate climes, and to persons of Caucasian stock. Elsewhere little attention has been paid to such defects and ". . . there is little published work on the incidence of congenital malformations of the heart in tropical and sub-tropical areas . . ."