database was maintained of cases verified by autopsy, surgery, or catheterization from which prevalence, distribution, and clinical epidemiology were defined The prevalence at live birth was 2.08 per 1000, with ventricular septal defects accounting for 15.7% of cases Carlgren LE, Ericson A, Kallen B Monitoring of congenital cardiac defects Pediatr Cardiol 1987;8:247–256 This study used four registries to determine an estimate of prevalence and frequency of distribution of congenitally malformed hearts for Sweden and gives limited epidemiologic features Ferencz C, Rubin JD, Loffredo CA Epidemiology of congenital heart disease The BaltimoreWashington infant study 1981-1989 Futura: Mount Kisco, NY; 1993 Perspectives in Pediatric Cardiology Vol This is an important monograph providing the full results of the seminal active surveillance study incorporating echocardiography, with a casecontrol comparison regarding potential risk factors The prevalence was 4.84 per 1000 live births Hiraishi S, et al Incidence and natural course of trabecular ventricular septal defect: two- dimensional echocardiography and color Doppler flow imaging study J Pediatr 1992;120:409–415 This study universally screened 1028 newborns with echocardiography and identified 21 with muscular ventricular septal defects, with four additional cases of congenital cardiac disease Early screening of live births gives the highest estimates of prevalence through complete ascertainment of cases References Jacobs JP Software development, nomenclature schemes, and mapping strategies for an international pediatric cardiac surgery database system Semin Thorac Cardiovasc Surg Pediatr Card Surg Annu 2002;5:153–162 Jacobs JP, Mavroudis C, Jacobs ML, et al Nomenclature and databases - the past, the present, and the future: a primer for the congenital heart surgeon Pediatr Cardiol 2007;28:105–115 Franklin RC, Jacobs JP, Tchervenkov CI, Beland MJ Bidirectional crossmap of the short lists of the European Paediatric Cardiac Code and the International Congenital Heart Surgery Nomenclature and Database Project Cardiol Young 2002;12:431–435 Ferencz C, Rubin JD, Loffredo CA, Magee CA Epidemiology of Congenital Heart Disease: The Baltimore-Washington Infant Study Futura Publishing Company Inc: Mount Kisco, NY; 1993:1981–1989 McCrindle BW, Shaffer KM, Kan JS, et al Cardinal clinical signs in the differentiation of heart murmurs in children Arch Pediatr Adolesc ... Jacobs JP Software development, nomenclature schemes, and mapping strategies for an international pediatric cardiac surgery database system Semin Thorac Cardiovasc Surg Pediatr Card Surg Annu 2002;5:153–162