Prevalence of aortic coarctation in Bogotá-Colombia from 2001 to 2018. The diagnostic needs to improve

OBJECTIVES: Aortic coarctation is the most frequent structural anomaly out of congenital heart diseases. This congenital defect is an important cause of death worldwide. We sought to determine the prevalence of aortic coarctation in Colombia and whether new policies have had an impact on its diagnosis. METHODS: In this study information from the Bogotá birth defect surveillance program during the years 2001-2018 from 63 hospitals was used. 537,026 live births of any weight and stillbirths of any weight were analyzed. The information was stored in a database on the servers of the Health Secretariat and the Pontificia Uni­versidad Javeriana. We analyzed the presence of aortic coarctation according to the newborn’s sex, weight, size, mother’s age, and gestational age at the time of birth and when coarctation is accompanied by other types of congenital malformations. RESULTS: The prevalence of aortic coarctation in Bogotá during the years 2001-2018 found in this study was 1.25 in 10,000 live births. We also found that prevalence of aortic coarctation in Bogotá changes throughout the years having a significant increase in the year 2018 with 6.57 cases in 10,000 live births. CONCLUSIONS: This prevalence is higher than the one found in a study with data from 2001 to 2014, which suggests an improvement in the country’s epidemiological surveillance and medical training. However, the prevalence found in Bogotá is still lower compared to the prevalence worldwide and from other continents, the prevalence for Latinamerica was significantly lower as compared to those in Asia, Europe, and United States so we emphasize the importance of continuing with improvements, such as standardizing screening methods and sensitivity of said methods in a local scale as well as a continental scale.