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Congenital Heart Defects
Eight out of every 1,000 infants have some type of structural heart abnormality at birth. Such abnormalities, known as congenital heart defects, may be so minor that they cause no symptoms or so severe that they are fatal. Congenital heart defects also vary widely in complexity, from a simple hole in the wall between two heart chambers to a complicated set of malformations, such as blood vessels in the wrong places and underdevelopment of one side of the heart. In all, there are more than 35 common congenital heart defects, falling mainly into these categories: |