A case of tricuspid atresia with transposition of the great vessels.

There is no trustworthy estimate of the incidence of congenital heart disease as a whole, still less of tricuspid atresia. Doubtless many infants have died with tricuspid atresia, on whom no post-mortem examination was made, with merely a diagnosis of congenital heart disease or even unrelated diagnoses, since many of them succumb to infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, septicaemia. The first case to be recorded appears to be that of Sieveking (1854), and since then about 50 cases have been reported. Abbott (1936) found 16 cases of tricuspid atresia of developmental origin in her series of 1,000 cases of congenital heart disease. In 7,500 necropsies at the Philadelphia General Hospital, Szypulski (1937) found 111 patients with congenital heart disease, but not one of tricuspid atresia. Similarly, Rannels and Propst (1937) in 4,255 necropsies with 36 cases of congenital heart disease at the University Hospital of Pennsylvania found no case of this condition. Roberts (1937) gives an incidence of congenital heart disease of 1 0O in his series of necropsies, in which again there was no case of tricuspid atresia. However, Fell, Gasul, Davis and Casas (1949) had five cases of the disease out of 135 cases of congenital cardiac anomalies at the Cook County Hospital in 1938-39. More recently Rossi, Grob and Bettex (1950) had one case out of 81 cases of congenital heart disease between 1947 and 1949 in Zurich. Campbell (1948) found 10 cases in 187 cases of cyanotic heart disease, and has since reported five patients who have had