To the Editor Mustard operation, a surgical treatment for transposition of great arteries, can be complicated by postprocedural atrial or caval baffle leaks, which lead to about 60% of late reoperations. Transcatheter procedures for baffle leakage closure have been anecdotally reported and shown to be both well tolerated and effective; however, no data have been reported to date about the short...

Four-fifths of the infants with transposition of the great vessels die within the first year of life (Abbott, 1936). Fifty-two per cent. die within the first month and 86% are dead within six months (Keith, Neill, Viad, Rowe, and Chute, 1953). This lesion in some form occurs in 20% of necropsies on patients with congenital heart disease (Keith, Rowe, and Vlad, 1958). In Birmingham, transpositio...

We hereby report a child with transposition of great arteries and regressed ventricle who underwent arterial switch operation (ASO) with the aid of cardiopulmonary bypass and "integrated" extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) circuit. The significance of lactate clearance as a guide to initiate and terminate veno-arterial ECMO in a post ASO child with regressed left ventricle is discussed.

Transposition of great arteries in humans is associated with a wide spectrum of coronary artery patterns. However, no information is available about how this pattern diversity develops. We have studied the development of the coronary arteries in mouse embryos with a targeted mutation of perlecan, a mutation that leads to ventriculo-arterial discordance and complete transposition in about 70% of...

The most common type of congenital haemolytic anaemia found in Great Britain is familial haemolytic anaemia (chronic acholuric jaundice). A similar congenital haemolytic anaemia may be found on rare occasions in children in whom the red cells do not show spherocytosis, or increased osmotic fragility. The response to splenectomy is not very satisfactory and the syndrome does not fit into the est...

The value of systolic anterior motion of the anterior mitral leaflet as a diagnostic marker for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy has been questioned because of its reported occurrence in other heart diseases. To determine the true specificity of systolic anterior motion for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, 721 echocardiograms from patients with a wide variety of cardiac diseases were reviewed for its pr...