Spontaneous Functional Closing of Ventricular Septal Defects

SINCE the advent of open-heart surgery ventricular septal defects have become a surgically correctable anomaly. Surgeons, in their understandable enthusiasm, have recommended early repair of these defects for a variety of reasons. To stem the tide of indiscriminate operation, cardiologists have pointed to the benign nature of some defects, to the relative stability of the pulmonary arterial pressure throughout childhood, to the development of "protective" infundibular stenosis and, last but not least, to the high mortality of open-heart surgery in infancy.The 4 cases reported below exemplify spontaneous diminution and even elimination of a sizable left-to-right shunt through a ventricular . . .