Maternal occupation and congenital heart defects: a case-control study

Summary This paper reports a Swedish analysis of the possible effect of maternal occupation on the occurrence of congenital heart defects. The analysis included 3324 infants (1108 cases and 2216 controls) born during the period 1982–1986. Information on maternal occupation was retrieved using two sources: the 1985 census and the Medical Birth Registry. A comparison between these two sources using the information on mothers of 756 infants born in 1986 showed a good concordance although 11% of the women were reported with a different employment status. No association appeared between the type of maternal occupation and the occurrence of infant congenital heart defects although some odds ratios were slightly above 1.