– What are tricuspid atresia and its types?
– How to identify the types of the heart defect.
Tricuspid Atresia is a heart defect that occurs during the growth of a child in the mother’s womb. It is a defect that occurs when the baby’s heart is developing.
It is a condition of a baby being born without the tricuspid valve. This valve is responsible for the flow of blood from the lungs to the other parts of the body.
The human heart comprises of four chambers; two chambers on the right side and two chambers on the left side. The chambers on the right side are the right atrium and right ventricle. The chambers on the left are the left atrium and left ventricles.
It is the tricuspid valve that controls the flow of blood into and out of the chambers of your heart. It also keeps blood from flowing backward.
Also, in a normal case, blood that returns from the body to the right atrium cannot directly enter the right ventricle, it must pass through a hole in the atrial septum (atrial septal defect) into the left atrium and then the left ventricle.
In the case of tricuspid atresia, the blood flows directly from the right atrium to the right ventricle, this is a backward movement. Also, the right side of the heart might not properly pump blood to the lungs or other parts of the body.
Also, forms of tricuspid atresia depend on how they occur.
There may be a hole in the ventricular septum, called a ventricular septal defect (VSD). And how this tricuspid atresia will occur is based on the size of the VSD. That is, how large the hole in the heart or ventricular septum is.
So, we can have forms of tricuspid atresia that includes, small VSD, moderate VSD and large VSD. The hole in the ventricular septum will determine whether we will classify the atresia as small, moderate and large.
Also, aside from a hole in the ventricular septum VSD, another form of tricuspid atresia occurs when the ventricular septal defect is small or absent. When this occurs, there will be a hindrance in the flow of blood.