Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) - Research Paper Example

Most common form of congenital heart diseases is defects in septation, atrial septal defects, ventricular septal defects, stenotic valvular lesions or coronary artery abnormalities (Schoen and Mitchell, 2009). Ventricular septal defects are the most common congenital defects occurring in the human heart.   Defect at the level of ventricle i.e. inter ventricular septum is called ventricular septal defect (VSD). It occurs in 1 of every 500 live births. The main pathology in a septal defect is that left ventricular pressure is higher than the right ventricular pressure resulting in blood flowing from left to right and pulmonary blood flow increases.

Clinically ventricular septal defects can be divided into small, medium and large. A small VSD is asymptomatic, a medium VSD presents with fatigue, cardiac enlargement and audible apex beat, whereas, a large VSD presents with pulmonary hypertension (Kumar and Clark, 2009). Hemodynamics is an important part of the cardiovascular system as it deals with the forces that pump the heart. Hemodynamics in an individual with congenital malformation is affected due to the defect. The factors affecting the hemodynamics of a ventricular septal defect are the size of the ventricular defect, pressure changes in right and left ventricular chambers and the pulmonary resistance.

A ventricular septal defect may not be evident at the birth of a child because the pressure in the right and left ventricles is equal and there is no shunting. As the pressure between the two ventricles starts to change, shunting also correspond and the ventricular defect becomes clinically evident. These changes do not apply to a patient of Down syndrome in which pulmonary resistance changes do not lead to signs of VSD. In VSD the shunt volume is linked to the size of the defect in the ventricle and the pulmonary vascular resistance.

If the ventricular defect is not accompanied by