5-359.67:

You have had a heart operation for a congenital deformity.

The heart pumps blood through the body. Inside the heart are 4 chambers. There are 2 heart atria and 2 ventricles. Both heart atria and both ventricles are separated from each other by a partition.

Major, important blood vessels branch out of the heart. The main artery (aorta), originating from the left lower chamber (ventricle) of the heart, supplies the whole body with oxygen-rich blood. The right ventricle pumps oxygen-poor blood through the pulmonary artery to the lungs, where the blood is then enriched with oxygen.

Your heart did not develop properly before you were born. As a result, just one ventricle was pumping the blood to both the body and to the lungs. This blood was a mixture of oxygen-poor and oxygen-rich blood.

In your case, the inflow from the heart to the aorta was also narrowed. As a result, too little blood was flowing to the aorta. The operation involved, for instance, widening your aorta with a patch and connecting it to your pulmonary artery. As a result, more blood is now flowing to your aorta. The blood is getting from the aorta to the lungs via an artificially created vascular connection. Other heart operations are usually required after an operation of this type.