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Uncommon variant of total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage in an infant with sudden death: a case report and review of the literature

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Abstract

Total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage (TAPVD) is encountered less frequently in infancy than various other congenital cardiac anomalies. We present a 4-week-old boy with a hitherto unreported variant of TAPVD who died suddenly soon after presentation to our emergency department. At autopsy, we found both pulmonary veins draining abnormally into the pulmonary artery and an atrial septal defect. We wish to emphasize that examination of the major vessels and their connections should be done in situ in all autopsies of unexpected deaths in infants and children, even if there were no symptoms and signs in the ante-mortem period and despite the clinical picture not being suggestive of TAPVD.

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Funding

The study was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (no. 82171871) and a project funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.

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Author notes

  1. Hongfei Xu, Ping Huang, and Xiaoling Shi contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic Medicine, Soochow University, Ganjiang East Road, Suzhou, 215000, China

    Hongfei Xu, Zhiyong Wang, Zhixiang Zhang & Shaohua Zhu

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Forensic Medicine, Academy of Forensic Science, Shanghai, China

    Ping Huang

  3. Forensic Science Center of Suzhou Tongji, Suzhou, 215000, China

    Xiaoling Shi

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  1. Hongfei Xu
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  2. Ping Huang
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  3. Xiaoling Shi
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  6. Shaohua Zhu
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Correspondence to Hongfei Xu.

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Xu, H., Huang, P., Shi, X. et al. Uncommon variant of total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage in an infant with sudden death: a case report and review of the literature. Forensic Sci Med Pathol 19, 551–556 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12024-022-00557-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12024-022-00557-3

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