Complete and Inverted Transposition of the Great Vessels

The embryology, pathology, clinical picture, and surgical treatment of transposition of the great vessels have been extensively reviewed. Less attention, however, has been given to the anatomy of the chambers of the heart in this condition. One name has been used to describe more than one anatomical type of transposition, or several names (mostly non-descriptive) have been used to describe one anatomical type. Corrected transposition (Rokitansky, 1875; Anderson, Lillehei, and Lester, 1957; and others), reversed torsion of the human heart (Lewis and Abbott, 1915), mirror image transposition of the ventricles, aorta, and pulmonary artery (Beattie, 1922), transposition of the ventricles and the arterial stems (Walmsley, 1931), mixed lhvocardia with transposed ventricles with complete pseudotransposition (Lev, 1954), and inverted transposition (Spitzer, 1923): these are all different terms used to describe one type of corrected transposition of the great vessels. Dextro- rotation and 'some type of lkvocardia', were two terms used by de La Cruz, Polansky, and Navarro- L6pez (1962) to describe one type of corrected transposition of the great vessels with isolated dextrocardia and isolated levocardia respectively. Whereas the term dextroversion has been used