Anatomy and echocardiography of discordant atrioventricular connections

The most appropriate way of describing the congenital cardiac malformations unified because the atrial chambers are joined across the atrioventricular junctions to morphologically inappropriate ventricles has long been contentious. In the past, the lesions have been described in such arcane terms as mixed levocardia,1 while "ventricular inversion" still retains it currency in some circles. As we will show in this review, the abnormal arrangements at the atrioventricular junctions can be found with various patterns, but most frequently the patients also have the arterial trunks arising from morphologically inappropriate ventricles. This combination is best described as congenitally corrected transposition, and will form the focus of our review. It is salutary to note that, when von Rokitansky gave the first description of this combination,2 one of his illustrations was ideally suited to aid the understanding of modern-day echocardiographers (Fig. 1). We hope to emulate von Rokitansky in our own review. © 2006 Cambridge University Press.