Letter: Anomalous origin of single coronary artery with multiple heart malformations.

innominate artery. I believe that the vessel concerned is in fact the hypoplastic ascending aorta, a component of the hypoplastic left heart of mitral and/or aortic valve atresia possibly the commonest cause of congenital cardiovascular death in the stillborn or neonate. The authors' 'truncus type III' is really the pulmonary trunk continuing into the wide ductus arteriosus; naturally, the vessel has no coronary ostia and it joins the aortic arch distally. Microdissection might demonstrate coronary ostia in the root of the tiny ascending aorta. The matter is referred to in my monograph (Hudson, i965). Reginald E. B. Hudson 'Thalassa', West Beach Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, BN4 5LF.