A heart defect or heart malformation is a congenital or acquired damage to the heart or individual heart structures and adjacent vessels that can lead to a functional impairment of the cardiovascular system or the heart–lung system.
Frequency
Approximately 6,000 children per year are born in Germany with a congenital heart defect, which is about 0.7 to 0.8% of all newborns. Thus, heart vitas are among the most common congenital malformations of newborns.
Causes
About 90% of all heart malformations are of multifactorial origin, only in 10% of cases genetic causes can be found. These include chromosomal aberrations and monogenic hereditary disorders such as toxins and alcohol can also cause heart defects, such as in fetal alcohol syndrome. Certain drugs and infections, such as rubella, can be the cause of cardiac vitium.
Frequently, further malformations in other organ systems can occur in connection with heart malformations.
- The Down syndrome (trisomy 21),
- The Edward syndrome (trisomy 18),
- The Pätau syndrome (trisomy 13),
- The Turner syndrome,
- The Di-George syndrome (Deletion 22q11),
- The Williams-Beuren syndrome (Deletion 7q11. 23).
Classification of heart defects
Heart malformations can be congenital or acquired. In addition, the heart alone can be affected, as well as the adjacent vessels. These include: A further distinction of heart defects is that of cyanotic and acyanotic heart vitae.
In the cyanotic heart defects, patients appear blue (cyanosis) because oxygen-deficient blood bypasses the lungs and flows directly back into the body’s circulation. This occurs, for example, in acyanotic heart defects, which include all narrowing of heart valves and vessels as well as left-right shunts. In these cases, oxygen-rich blood from the left ventricle is mixed with oxygen-poor blood from the right ventricle.
Furthermore, the heart malformation can be divided into a left heart obstruction and a right heart obstruction. The danger of right heart obstruction is a decompensation of the right heart due to a previous enlargement of the right heart tissue. This includes In left heart obstruction, the outflow tract of the left chamber is blocked.
The resulting increased stress on the heart muscles leads to an enlargement of the left heart tissue. Examples of left heart obstruction are Furthermore, there are also diseases of the excitation conduction system: in addition to the congenital ones, there are, as already mentioned, acquired heart diseases. These include endocarditis, cardiac arrhythmia following surgery, heart muscle diseases and inflammation of the heart muscle.
- Transposition of the major arteries (TGA), i.e. a dislocation of the major arteries around the heart such as the aorta;
- Double inlet ventricle (DIV) is English and means a double inlet to the ventricle;
- Total pulmonary venous insufficiency (TAPVR) and common trunk vein (Truncus arteriosus communis), where the great aorta and the pulmonary artery (Truncus pulmonalis) were not completely separated during fetal development.
- Right-left shunts before and
- In Fallot’s tetralogy (a complex heart malformation),
- Pulmonary atresia (closure of the pulmonary valve),
- Double outlet ventricle (double outlet of a ventricle),
- Tricuspid atresia,
- Complete transposition or a truncus arteriosus communis.
- Atrial septal defect,
- Partial pulmonary vein malfunction,
- Ventricular septal defect or
- A Persistent Ductus Arteriosus Botalli.
- Pulmonary valve stenosis,
- Tricuspid valve stenosis,
- Pulmonary valve insufficiency,
- Tricuspid valve insufficiency.
- Aortic valve stenosis,
- Aortic valve insufficiency,
- Aortic coarctation,
- Interrupted aortic arch,
- Hypoplastic left heart syndrome,
- Mitral valve insufficiency and
- Mitral valve stenosis.
- QT syndrome,
- Sick sinus syndrome and
- Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.
