Objective: Evaluation of patients who presented at the pediatric cardiology clinic and received a diagnosis of congenital heart disease (CHD) in terms of consanguinity.

Material and Methods: The files of 3295 patients who presented at the pediatric cardiology clinic of our hospital for the first time between January 2008 and January 2009 were retrospectively examined and 651 cases who were diagnosed with CHD via echocardiography were included in the study. The control group included 2430 cases who were not diagnosed with CHD and whose consanguinity information was available.results: Consanguinity was preset in 127 of the 651 cases (19.5%) in the study group. The consanguinity was third degree in 87 patients (68.5%), fifth degree in 33 patients (25.9%) and fourth degree in 7 patients (%5.5). The consanguinity rate of the control group was 20.8% and similar to the study group, with most subjects reporting third degree consanguinity. Evaluation of the two groups and the congenital heart disease subtypes showed no statistically significant difference regarding consanguinity (p=0.072).conclusion: CHD is thought to be a result of the interaction between environmental and genetic factors but most of the reasons are still unknown. We believe that more studies on consanguinity as a reason of CHD are needed

Keywords: Consanguinity, Child, Congenital heart disease