Introduction
A single ventricle (SV) heart
defect is a rare complex congenital cardiac malformation, accounting for
approximately 1%-2% of congenital heart diseases.1SV is more commonly referred to as two-sided atrioventricular valves or
a common atrioventricular valve opening in one ventricle. Patients with
SV have only one functional ventricular chamber, and blood from the body
and pulmonary circulation is mixed in the heart chamber, often causing
overload in the single functional ventricular chamber and leading to
heart failure in the early stages.2Surgical intervention is the
mainstay treatment for SV patients, although patients who do not
receivesurgical intervention may also survive. For example, it was
reported that among unoperated patients with single-ventricular hearts,
the first-year survival rate was 10 percent to 30 percent, with a median
survival of 14 years.3 In this study, we
report four adult patients who had
SV since birth without surgical intervention and survived to adulthood.
All the case information and the images (Figures 1-4) in this review
have been approved by the ethics committee of our hospital.We also
conducted a Medline search and reviewed similar cases published in
recent years. In addition, we summarized the influence of treatment
methods on the survival rate of SV patients in recent years.