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“Corrected transposition, when first encountered, resembles an unreal apparition…. All of the important people were there doing their expert job. The operation began well. The individual cardiac chambers and structures were present and accounted for, and the ventricular septal defect was in the perimembranous location. But something else was fundamentally wrong. Almost everything was out of place in a weird mime of normal, clearly an illusion characteristic of another nightmare. There seemed no choice but to press on even in the face of this confusion, hoping as always that by applying basic principles one could win out. The ventricular septal defect was therefore carefully patched so as to avoid the conduction system, and perfusion was discontinued.
Heart block ensued, cardiac output became poor, and tragedy loomed.”
Dwight McGoon, 19831
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Definition and Sequential Analysis
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The classic definition of “congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries” (CC-TGA) derived from the observation that the effects of such transposition are “corrected” by the congenital inversion of the two ventricles, with the two circulatory pathways “physiologically” in series despite morphologic derangements. Basically the same as “two negative gives a positive,” this condition comprises less than 1 percent of all congenital heart ...