Acyanotic heart defect have normal levels of oxyhemoglobin saturation in systemic circulation. This tends to be left to right side heart shunts, whereas cyanotic heart disease is right to left shunts which lowers oxygen saturation level.
Left to right shunting heart defects include ventricular septal defect or VSD (30% of all congenital heart defects), patent ductus arteriosus or PDA, atrial septal defect or ASD, and atrioventricular septal defect or AVSD.
Acyanotic heart defects without shunting include pulmonary stenosis, a narrowing of the pulmonary valve, aortic stenosis and coarctation of the aorta.
Famous quotes containing the words heart and/or defect:
“But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
—Bible: New Testament 1 Corinthians 2:9.
“The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)