The Natural History and Progress in Treatment of Congenital Heart Defects

To review this book is to remember with pleasure an excellent conference, well-planned and carried out, to bring up to date the accumulated knowledge of about 20 years of medical and surgical experiences with the common forms of congenital heart disease. Experts from Canada, the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands summarized and illustrated their experience and presented recommendations. All that is missing in these printed pages is the cordiality and informality of discussions that followed the presentations and continued as small groups gathered and exchanged ideas. The first topic concerned the natural history of the most common malformation, ventricular septal defect (VSD). The experience of the host group from Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto set the high standard for the rest of the subjects in a critical analysis of 1,500 cases of isolated VSD under long-term follow-up. Selection of cases with large VSD for surgery