My best guess would be one of the following:
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy
Cor Pulmonale
Atrial Septal Defect
Ventricular Septal Defect
Coarctation of the Aorta
Which all cause the heart or parts there of to enlarge.
I found the medical stuff in the film to be quite accurate, except no Surgeons in the States seem to wear Visors during surgery! Infection control would have their heads.
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jax1
14 years ago
Cor Pulmonale- Extremely unlikely to impossible. Cor pulmonale by definition is heart failure secondary to chronic lung disease. The boy's lungs were perfectly healthy. He only developed pulmonary oedema (fluid on his lungs) as a consequence of his heart not working properly.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy- Also unlikely as the cardiothoracic surgeon explained that the trouble with the boy's heart was because of 3 holes in his heart. The hypertrophy (increase in size) sounded like it occured secondary to the holes in his heart because his ventricle (probably his left one) was working very hard to compensate for the additional end diastolic volume (increased volume of blood before the onset of the contraction)
Atrial septal defect- Unlikely as this is usually asymptomatic until middle age. Also it won't present with such overt symptoms if it is the only pathology.
Ventricular Septal Defect- The more likely diagnosis. However an AVSD sounds more likely.
Coarctation of the aorta- Unlikely as the kid had low blood pressures. Patients with coarctation of the aorta usually have high blood pressure's as the left ventricle has to work harder to pump blood through the narrowed aorta.
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