Inherited heart defects - Yale School of Medicine research

Pediatrics for Parents, April, 1989

Inherited Heart Defects If you have a congenital heart defect, your children have an increased chance of having one also. A study from the Yale School of Medicine found the incidence of congenital heart defects to be 5.3 percent in the general population, but 11.8 percent when one parent had a heart defect.

There were slight, but not significant, differences in the rates depending on which parent had the defect. If the mother had the defect, the incidence was 13 percent; if the father did, it was 10.5 percent.