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Patients: We reviewed all patients evaluated at our center with situs solitus, levocardia, and a right aortic arch that were born between January 2000 and January 2018., Results: From our databases, we identified 204 patients. We excluded patients with a double aortic arch from analysis. Of the 204 patients, 103 (50%) were male. Of the 204 patients, 95 (47%) had an isolated right aortic arch. Of the 95 with an isolated right aortic arch, 4 (4%) had chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, and 89 (94%) had a vascular ring. Of the 204 patients, 109 (53%) had a surgical intracardiac malformation. Of the 109, with an associated surgical intracardiac malformation, 38 (35%) had chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, and 28 (26%) had a vascular ring. Overall, of the 204 patients, 200 (98%) had a vascular ring, an associated intracardiac malformation, or both. Prenatal detection was 85% (40/47) for the subset of patients born in Southern Nevada between January 2015 and January 2018., Conclusion: this review, to best of our knowledge, reports one of largest series of right aortic arches in the literature. Data from our cohort demonstrates that a right aortic arch in situs solitus is almost always associated with pathology. Further, our center's right aortic arch prenatal detection rate exceeds previous reports., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Objective: We hypothesized that clinic-based, hepatic-ultrasound, elastography measurements, either alone or in combination with other noninvasive variables, might correlate with liver-biopsy fibrosis scores in patients post-Fontan., Methods: Between March 2012 and February 2017, we identified patients post-Fontan that underwent elective cardiac catheterization and simultaneous transvenous hepatic biopsy. From this group, we selected patients that met inclusion criteria for liver-ultrasound, shear-wave elastography. Utilizing the results of elastography, laboratory testing, and time post-Fontan, we constructed a composite Fontan hepatic index as a sum of elastography measurements in kilopascals, model for end-stage liver disease excluding INR scores, and the square root of the number of years post-Fontan. Further, we analyzed correlations between Fontan hepatic index values and fibrosis scores from hepatic biopsy., Results: We identified a total of 79 post-Fontan patients that underwent cardiac catheterization and liver biopsy. Of the 79 patients, 53 met inclusion criteria, and 32 consented to undergo hepatic-ultrasound elastography. Of the 32 that underwent elastography, data from 30 patients was used for analysis. We found no statistically significant differences in demographics, laboratory values, or cardiac catheterization data between the 30 included patients and the 21 that did not participate. Utilizing data from the 30 included patients, we found a strong, highly statistically significant correlation between the Fontan hepatic index values and total fibrosis scores (R = 0.8, P < .00001). However, the cohort size prevented reliable discriminating cut-off values for the range of total fibrosis scores., Conclusions: In a small cohort of patients post-Fontan, preliminary findings suggest that the composite Fontan hepatic index might be a clinically useful, noninvasive method of serially monitoring for hepatic fibrosis. Further studies, with large patient cohorts, are necessary to validate our findings and develop clinically useful discriminatory cutoff values., (© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Objective: We hypothesized that a right aortic arch in situs solitus, with or without an associated cardiovascular malformation, is often associated with a vascular ring., Methods: From those born in Southern Nevada between March 2012 and March 2017, we identified 50 (3.6 per 10,000 live births) with a right aortic arch and situs solitus. From the 50 patients, 6 did not meet inclusion criteria for further analysis., Results: Of the 44 remaining, 33 (75%) had a vascular ring. Of the 33 with a vascular ring, 26 (79%) occurred with an isolated right aortic arch, and 7 (21%) had an associated cardiovascular malformation. Of the total 44 patients with a right aortic arch in situs solitus, 34 (79%) were diagnosed prenatally., Conclusions: In conclusion, we found a right aortic arch in situs solitus was often associated with a vascular ring. Further, to the best of our knowledge, no previous general population study has demonstrated an equal or higher right aortic arch, prenatal detection rate of 79%., (© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)