title: The use of national health registers for studying environmental causes of congenital defects.
abstract: This review summarizes and discusses the use of central health registers in studies of causes of congenital malformations. The review is illustrated using data from the Swedish Medical Birth Register with adjacent registers and gives examples of different methods to identify environmental exposures. The review stresses the usefulness of this approach but also the inherent problems of which the researcher must be fully aware.
authors.affiliation: Centre of Reproduction Epidemiology, Tornblad Institute, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Bengt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Källén
mesh_terms: D000013:Congenital Abnormalities / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003625:Data Collection; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000506:poisoning; D006801:Humans; D012042:Registries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants