Auger N, Carrier FM, Arbour L, et al. - Anesthesia is required in a substantial number of pregnant women for non-obstetric surgery, researchers here examined if and how first trimester anesthesia is associated with the risk of congenital heart defects in offspring. Via performing this longitudinal cohort study of 2,095,300 pregnancies resulting in live births in hospitals of Quebec, Canada, between 1990 and 2016, they sought for women who received general or local/regional anesthesia in the first trimester, including anesthesia between 3 and 8 weeks post-conception, the critical weeks of fetal cardiogenesis. Among those with exposure to anesthesia, there were 107.3 congenital heart defects per 10,000 infants compared with 87.2 per 10 000 unexposed infants. Findings overall suggest that the risk of congenital heart defects may increase because of receiving general anesthesia during critical periods of fetal heart development.