Caval refluxes in angiocardiography and the dynamics of the right atrium.

During the past few years angiocardiography has become one of the routine methods in the investigation of congenital heart disease. The development of the technique has increased its diagnostic value so that it offers a method of judging not only the anatomical, but also the pathophysiological aspects of a heart disease. This paper deals with a problem often met with in angiocardiography, i.e. the regurgitation of dye from the right atrium into the vene cavx and their proximal branches, and its relation to the function of the right atrium. This phenomenon, which occurs especially in children, has sometimes been thought to have a special diagnostic value. Up to the present, however, no detailed investigation of the mechanism of this reflux appears to have been carried out.