The catch22 (DiGeorge) syndrome is probably the most frequent 22q11 microdeletion syndrome with an incidence of 1: 4000 to 1: 5000. DiGeorge, a physician in Philadelphia, was the first to describe it and he postulated that a disorder of the 3rd and 4th pharyngeal arches with the corresponding neural ridge material was involved. The cranial neural ridge cells form a large part of the mesenchymal cell material of the bones in the neck region, the connective tissue of the face, the pharyngeal pouches, the walls of the conotruncus (large vessels), the thymus and the parathyroid.
Consequently, affected children exhibit abnormal facial structure, hypoparathyroidism, thymus-aplasia and conotruncal cardiac defects or aortic arch anomalies, respectively.
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