Box-shaped heart

Dr Daniel J Bell ◉ and Dr Vincent Tatco ◉ et al.

A box-shaped heart is a radiographic description given to the cardiac silhouette in some cases of Ebstein anomaly. The classic appearance of this finding is caused by the combination of the following features:

huge right atrium that may fill the entire right hemithorax
shelved appearance of the left cardiac contour due to the dilated right ventricular outflow tract or elevated residual right ventricle
small aorta and main pulmonary artery

Quiz questions

References

Congenital heart disease

There is more than one way to present the variety of congenital heart diseases. Whichever way they are categorized, it is helpful to have a working understanding of normal and fetal circulation, as well as an understanding of the segmental approach to imaging in congenital heart disease.

congenital heart disease
- subtypes
- normal relationship between chambers and valves
  - shunting
  - stenosis
    - atrioventricular valves
    - outflow tract
    - great vessels
      - coarctation of the aorta
      - interrupted aortic arch
    - venous inflow
      - partial anomalous pulmonary venous return
      - total anomalous pulmonary venous return
  - hypoplasia
    - hypoplastic left heart syndrome
    - hypoplastic right heart syndrome
  - anomalous valves
    - Ebstein anomaly
- abnormal relationship of chambers and valves
  - atrioventricular abnormality
    - when associated with a univentricular heart
      - double inlet right ventricle
      - double inlet left ventricle
    - atrioventricular discordance
  - great vessel connection abnormality
    - conotruncal cardiac anomalies
      - transposition of the great arteries
        
        D-loop transposition of the great arteries
        
        L-loop transposition of the great arteries
      - tetralogy of Fallot
      - truncus arteriosus
      - double outlet left ventricle
      - double outlet right ventricle
        Taussig-Bing anomaly
    - pentalogy of Cantrell
    - Shone syndrome
- congenital heart disease - chest x-ray approach
- surgical repairs (mnemonic)

Article information

rID: 43275

System: Chest, Cardiac

Section: Signs

Tag: refs, cases, snippet title

Synonyms or Alternate Spellings:

box shaped heart

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Cases and figures

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