The families of 207 index patients treated for spinal dysraphism at The Hospital for Sick Children were studied to discover whether the condition was aetiologically related to the classical neural tube malformation--spina bifida cystica and anencephaly. The index patients had all had a tethered conus medullaris and one or more of a variety of anomalies of the spinal cord, vertebrae, or skin ove...

The tendency for sibs affected by non-syndromal neural tube defect (NTD) to have the same type of lesion was assessed retrospectively in a series of 66 affected sibships from the west of Scotland. Different schemes were used to classify the lesions: in the simplest classification into either anencephaly (including anencephaly-spina bifida) or spina bifida there was a tendency for spina bifida t...

This paper describes the magnitude of the medical care for pregnant women with an anencephalic fetus. Anencephaly is an abnormality incompatible with life. The right to abort in this case is under litigation at the Brazilian Supreme Court. This survey was conducted among 1,814 medical doctors, all of them affiliated to the Brazilian Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (Febrasgo), correspond...

What Are Neural Tube Defects? Neural tube defects are problems with the cranium (brain and skull) or spine (spinal cord and backbone) that can occur in fetuses during early pregnancy. These problems occur when the neural tube, an important embryonic structure, does not close properly. The 2 major types of neural tube defects are anencephaly (in which parts of the brain are not formed properly) ...