The association of congenital ptosis and congenital heart disease.

Congenital ptosis and congenital heart disease are known to occur simultaneously in the presence of several well-recognized clinical syndromes. We report seven cases of documented, structural congenital heart defects found among 156 consecutive congenital ptosis patients operated at the Wills Eye Hospital. The possibility that the concurrence found in the patients was a manifestation of a dysmorphic syndrome was carefully excluded by observers skilled in the recognition of such anomalies. The observed rate of congenital heart disease, in otherwise normal congenital ptosis patients, was five times the expected rate in the pediatric population at large. This should alert ophthalmologists examining pediatric ptosis patients to the possibility of a coexisting structural heart defect.