Cardiac catheterization in the diagnosis of congenital heart disease.

Cardiac catheterization is now a recognized method of clinical investigation and in recent years has been applied to the diagnosis of malformed hearts (Cournand et al., 1949; Warren et al., 1946; Groom et al., 1948; Handelsman et al., 1948; Dexter et al., 1947; Bing et al., 1947; Taylor et al., 1948; Burchell et al., 1948; Geiger et al., 1946; Brannon et al., 1945; Howarth et al., 1947; Baldwin et al., 1946; Soulie et al., 1949). So far we have used this method on a group of 70 patients with a wide range of cardiac malformations. Here we attempt to evaluate the method as a diagnostic procedure, using the published results of other workers to supplement our own experience.