Medicine: Snowman Heart

Another unusual heart condition was reported last week. Among the anomalies that may develop in the unborn child is one where the veins which should lead oxygenated blood from the lungs to the left side of the heart are hooked up incorrectly and pump it back into the right side. Difficult to detect, the condition used to be untreatable, and usually caused death before age 20. Now, with the aid of heart-lung machines, it can be corrected. Writing in the A.M.A. Journal of a case at Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hospital, Drs. Richard L. Golden and Charles A. Bertrand try to avoid the technical designation of “total anomalous pulmonary venous connection.” They call the condition simply “snowman heart.” Who coined the term is unclear, but it is especially apt. In the X ray, the enlarged, misshapen heart casts a distinctive white shadow shaped like a snowman.