Cardiovascular Flashcards
(118 cards)
What type of shunt produces early cyanosis?
What is the usual treatment?
Causes?
Right-to-left shunts.
Urgent surgical correction and/or maintenance of PDA.
5 T’s:
- Truncus arteriosus (1 vessel)
- Transposition (2 switched vessels)
- Tricuspid atresia (3 = tri)
- Tetralogy of fallot (4 = tetra)
- TAPVR (5 letters in name)
Neonate presents with cyanosis at birth and dies.
Autopsy shows a single great vessel that supplies the lungs and systemic circulation. What disease was present?
Persistent Truncus Arteriosus.
Most patient have accompanying VSD.

A concerned mother brings her newborn to you because she thinks the baby is turning blue.
An echocardiogram shows the aorta leaving the right ventricle and the pulmonary trunk leaving the left ventricle.
What is that disease? What must be associated for the child to have survived to this age?

D-transposition of the great vessels.
Failure of the aorticopulmonary septum to spiral.
There must be a VSD or PDA, or patent foramen ovale to produce a shunt and allow mixing of blood (needed so systemic circulation can get oxygen!).
Without surgical intervention, most infants die within the first few months of life.
What defects are associated with tricuspid atresia?
Absence of tricuspid valve and hypoplastic RV.
Requires an atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect for viability.
Early cyanosis.
What defects are associated with Tetralogy of Fallot?
PROVe
- Pulmonary infundibular stenosis (most important determinant for prognosis)
- RVH - boot shaped heart on CXR
- Overriding aorta
- VSD
Caused by anterosuperior displacement of the infundibular septum.
Most common cause of early childhood stenosis.

What is the etiology of cyanosis in tetrology of fallot?
How does squatting affect a patient with tetrology of fallot?
What is the treatment for this disease?
Cyanosis due to pulmonary stenosis forcing right-to-left flow across VSD. Causes “tet spells” and right-ventricular hypertrophy.
Squatting increases systemic vascular resistance, reduces right-to-left shunt, and improves cyanosis.
Treat with early surgical correction.
Neonate presents with cyanosis.
Echocardiogram discovers an ASD and that the pulmonary veins drain into the right heart circulation.
What is this disease?
Total anomalous pulmonary venous return (TAPVR)
Pulmonary veins will drain into the SVC, coronary sinus, etc instead of the left atrium.
Associated with ASD and sometimes PDA to allow for right-left shunting to maintain cardiac output.
What conditions result in late cyanosis (“blue kids”).
List in order of frequency
Ventricular septal defect (VSD) > Atrial septal defect (ASD) > Patent ductus arteriosus (PDA)
Is a VSD typically symptomatic at birth?
What is the usual course?
VSD usually asymptomatic at birth, manifests weeks late ror remain asymptomatic throughout life.
Most will self-resolve. Larger lesions cause LV overload and heart failure.
A defect in what is the most common cause of ASD?
What might you hear on auscultation?
Defect in the septum secundum most common cause of isolated ASD. (Defects in the septum primum associated with other anomalies).
Might hear loud S1; wide, fixed split S2.
May be asymptomatic or cause heart failure.
Different than patent foramen ovale - septae are missing rather than unfused.
Neonate presents with late cyanosis. You hear a “machine like murmur” on auscultation.
Pathogenesis of this disease?
Patent ductus arteriosus.
Fetal period, shunt is from right to left (normal) to bypass lung circulation.
In neonatal period, lung resistance decreases, shunt becomes left to right, RVH and/or LVH and heart failure occurs.

What can you use to close a PDA?
What could you use to maintain patency? When would you want to do that?
Endomethacin (indomethacin) ends patency of PDA
PGE kEEps it open - use to sustain life in conditions such as transposition of the great vessels.
(Low O2 tension also keeps PDA open)
A child presents with cyanosis, clubbing, and polycythemia.
Echocardiography reveals a VSD.
What is this condition?
Eisenmenger syndrome.
An uncorrected left-to-right shunt (VSD, ASD, PDA) increases pulmonary blood flow which induces remodeling of the vasculature and pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Right ventricular hypertrophy occurs to compensate and shunt becomes right to left.
An infant with Turner syndrome presents with a systolic click and a delayed femoral pulse as compared with the brachial pulse.
Infantile type coarctation of the aorta.
Aorta narrowing is proximal to insertion of the ductus arteriosus (preductal). Associated with bicuspid aortic valve (systolic click) and other heart defects.
Infantile: In close to the heart.
An adult presents with notching of the ribs, hypertension in the upper extremities, and weak, delayed pulses in lower extremities (radiofemoral delay).
Adult-type Coarctation of the aorta.
Aorta narrowing is distal to ligamentum arteriosum (postductal)
Adult: Distal to ductus.
What congenital heart defects are associated with 22q11 syndromes?
Include DiGeorge, velo-cardio-facial syndrome, Shprintzen syndrome, conotruncal anomaly face syndrome, Strong syndrome, congenital thymic aplasia, and thymic hypoplasia. Due to small deletion in chromosome 22.
Truncus arteriosus, tetralogy of Fallot.
What congenital heart defects are associated with Down syndrome?
ASD, VSD, AV septal defect (endocardial cushion defect)
What congenital heart defects are associated with congenital rubella?
Septal defects, PDA, pulmonary artery stenosis.
What congenital heart defects are associated with Turner syndrome?
Bicuspid aortic valve, coarctation of aorta (preductal)
What congenital heart defects are associated with Marfan syndrome?
MVP (mitral valve prolapse), thoracic aortic aneurysm and dissection, aortic regurgitation.
What congenital heart defects are associated with an infant of a diabetic mother?
Transposition of the great vessels.
What values define hypertension?
Risk factors?
Systolic BP > 140 mmHg and/or diastolic BP > 90mmHg
Age, obesity, diabetes, smoking, genetics, black > white > Asian.
Young patient presents with hypertension. Angiography shows a “string of beads” appearance of the renal artery.

Fibromuscular Dyplasia
What are some causes of hypertension?
90% is primary (essential) and related to increased cardiac output or total peripheral resistance.
Remaining 10% mostly secondary to renal disease, including fibromuscular dysplasia in younger patients.














