Significance of minor abnormalities in children.

Minor abnormalities reflect problems in prenatal development and can provide useful clues to the presence of major anomalies or developmental problems. In a comparative study, children with Down's syndrome, as expected, had significantly more minor abnormalities than those with other syndromes or major anomalies and those with developmental delay and/or cerebral palsy of unknown etiology. These two groups were not significantly different from each other in the number of minor abnormalities, but both had significantly more abnormalities than the group of normal children.