CONGENITAL CORONARY ARTERIO-VENOUS ANEURYSM

Congenital arterio-venous aneurysms are not rare and it is, perhaps, surprising that they do not occur more frequently for the development of the vascular bed is extraordinarily complex. They are most commonly situated in the brain, limbs, or lungs, and the local and general disturbances of function that they produce are now well known. Involvement of the coronary circulation must be most unusual for only three instances have been reported in the English journals (Halpert, 1930; Paul et al., 1949). The following case is of interest because the arterio-venous aneurysm, which involved the circumflex branch of the left coronary artery, proved to be clinically indistinguishable from a patent ductus arteriosus, and the blood flow through it became so great that the patient died from congestive cardiac failure.