A congenital heart defect (CHD) is a defect in the structure of the heart and great vessels which is present at birth. Many types of heart defects exist, most of which either obstruct blood flow in the heart or vessels near it, or cause blood to flow through the heart in an abnormal pattern. Other defects, such as long QT syndrome, affect the heart's rhythm. Heart defects are among the most common birth defects and are the leading cause of birth defect-related deaths. Approximately 9 people in 1000 are born with a congenital heart defect. Many defects don't need treatment, but some complex congenital heart defects require medication or surgery.
Read more about Congenital Heart Defect: Signs and Symptoms, Embryology, Causes, Classification, Diagnosis, Treatment
Famous quotes containing the words congenital, heart and/or defect:
“France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
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Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
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Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“It is to be lamented that the principle of national has had very little nourishment in our country, and, instead, has given place to sectional or state partialities. What more promising method for remedying this defect than by uniting American women of every state and every section in a common effort for our whole country.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)