Pattern of symptomatic congenital heart disease among oriental neonates—a decade's experience

Between 1981 and 1990, 765 symptomatic neonates with major congenital heart malformations were admitted into the Grantham Hospital. This represented an incidence of 10 per 10,000 live births for Hong Kong. The figure was comparable to those reported for Caucasians. Among the 744 Oriental neonates, obstruction of the pulmonary outflow tract occurred most frequently (281, 37.8%), followed by left ventricular outflow tract obstruction (169, 22.7%), left-to-right shunting (115, 15.5%), complete transposition (92, 12.4%), common mixing situations (62,8.3%), and miscellaneous causes (25, 3.3%). When compared with the available reports from the West, Chinese neonates had a high preference for pulmonary outflow tract obstruction (p