Dimensions of the heart and great vessels in normal children. A postmortem study of cardiac ventricles, valves and great vessels.

Knowledge of normal heart dimensions is often needed in the planning of cardiac surgery in children. Attempts to define 'normal' have so far given varied and somewhat controversial results. The purpose of this study was to determine normal values for all heart measurements of clinical importance in children. Special interest was focused on the relationship between the diameters of the right and the left pulmonary artery (RPA abd LPA) and the descending thoracic aorta (DTA), defined as RPA/DTA+LPA/DTA, which is widely used in evaluating the feasibility of certain pediatric cardiac operations. The normal curve of this ratio during growth has not previously been presented in the literature. The observed data provide reliable normal values for the diameters of the great vessels and valves and the ventricular volumes of the heart.