Atrial Septal Defect

Atrial septal defect is one of the common types of congenital heart disease. Although recognized for centuries and receiving increasing attention since 1900, it was the detailed description by Bedford, Papp, and Parkinson in 1941, of the physical, electrocardiographic, radiological, and diagnostic features, the complications, and the clinical course, that brought the salient characteristics of this disorder to the attention of the medical profession. More recently, with the advent of new tech- niques of investigation, many publications have described the pathological physiology of the disease (