It is often not easy to understand what a heart defect is and how it should be treated, especially at the beginning. Here we explain it to you. With the following overview, a kind of small heart defect lexicon or heart defect overview, we want to make the most common heart defects a little easier for you to understand.
If you or your child have been diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, it can sometimes be difficult to understand the discussions about diagnosis and treatment. It is also not easy for the physician to explain how the blood flows in the heart (hemodynamics) and what the consequences are. It becomes easier when the situation can be illustrated with a picture, making what was previously abstract clear.
We have made an effort to provide a small compilation of the most common heart defects with clear and easy-to-understand drawings to make it a little easier to communicate with the physicians treating you. Even if the compilation is of course not complete and the individual heart defect usually looks a little different from the diagram.
To give you a brief overview of the further course of the disease, we have compiled information on treatment and prognosis in addition to the description of the heart defect. This is of course only a guide and cannot replace an individual discussion with the physicians treating you. We hope that in this way we can improve mutual understanding in Communications with each other!
The list is still being worked on - please do not be disappointed if not all descriptions are included and the information is not yet fully available. We are working on it!
Overview of the most common heart defects
Heart defects with left-to-right shunt
- Ventricular septal defect (VSD)
- Atrial septal defect - secondary type (ASD II)
- Sinus venosus defect - partial pulmonary vein malformation (PAPVR)
- Atrial septal defect - Primum type (ASD I)
- Atrioventricular septal defect (AVSD)
- Patent ductus arteriosus (PDA)
Heart defects with legal-left shunt
- Tetralogy of Fallot (ToF)
- Legal double outlet ventricle (DORV)
- Pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect and aortopulmonary collaterals (PA-VSD MAPCAs)
Heart defects with left ventricular obstruction
- Aortic valve stenosis (AS)
- Aortic isthmus stenosis (ISTA)
- Interrupted aortic arch (IAA)
- Shone complex (MS, AS, ISTA)
- Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS)
Heart defects with right heart obstruction
- Pulmonary valve stenosis (PS)
- Pulmonary atresia with intact ventricular septum (PA-IVS)
- Tricuspid atresia (TA)
- Ebstein anomaly
Heart defects with vascular malconnections
- Transposition of the great arteries (d-TGA)
- Truncus arteriosus communis (TAC)
- Total pulmonary vein malformation (TAPVR)
- Congenital corrected transposition of the great arteries (l-TGA, ccTGA)
Other heart diseases