Owing to the increasing success of surgical treatment for congenital cardiac deformities, some patients who would otherwise have died will undoubtedly live to have children. The problem of the inheritance of cardiac anomalies has thus become of greater importance than before. It has always been a question, usually posed by the parents of the defective child, whether or not another sibling would be likely to be similarly affected. With modern surgery a further question arises, namely whether the frequency of the genes responsible may rise in the population. The family reported here is thought to be of sufficient interest to warrant recording, since not only were subjects found with congenital cardiac defects throughout four generations, but these were closely linked with malformations in the skeletal system (Table I). The bony changes mainly TABLE I 3 children died infancy
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.