Atrial Septal Defect – A Hole In The Heart

Filed under: Blood Pressure, Conditions & Diseases, Heart Health
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Atrial Septal Defect - A Hole In The Heart

Ever wonder why doctor have to listen to your heart every time you go for a check up? Here’s the reason – listening to the thumping of your heart can give doctors the heads-up on some problems, like an atrial septal defect.

Atrial Septal Defect

The heart has four chambers. The two lower chambers are the ventricles: the left ventricle and the right ventricle. The upper chambers are the atria, and there are also two of them – the left atrium and the right atrium.

In a person without a heart defect, blood that is in need of oxygen flows to the right atrium, then to the right ventricle, then it is pumped to the lungs to receive oxygen. The oxygenated blood then returns to the left atrium, flows into the left ventricle, and then heads out to the body through the aorta, a large blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the smaller blood vessels in the body.

In a person with an atrial septal defect, there is an opening in the wall between the right atrium and the left atrium (this wall is called the atrial septum). As a result of this opening, some oxygenated blood from the left atrium flows through the hole in the septum into the right atrium, where it mixes with oxygen-poor blood and increases the total amount of blood that flows toward the lungs.

Atrial septal defect is a type of congenital heart disease, which means that a person is born with it. About 8 out of 1,000 babies born have heart disease, and 6 percent to 8 percent of those babies have an atrial septal defect.