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Abstract

This invention relates to the creation of an animal model which has the circulatory physiology of the fatal human infant condition of transposition of the great arteries (TGA) by surgically altering the normal animal heart, and the surgical correction of this fatal physiology by simultaneously altering the normal animal vasculature. The result of performing these two procedures simultaneously in a normal animal is that the heart chamber that normally pumps deoxygenated blood to the lungs (right ventricle) is switched to pump oxygenated blood to the body, and the chamber that normally pumps oxygenated blood to the body (left ventricle) is switched to pump deoxygenated blood to the lungs. Such unusual circulatory connections are present in humans who have the condition known as congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (corrected TGA). The model is useful for surgical training, the design of safer TGA corrections, the development of operations to interchange the pulmonary for the failing systemic ventricle, and makes it possible to thoroughly study the important clinical, extracellular, cellular and intracellular consequences of switching the pulmonary and systemic pumping roles of morphologic right and left ventricles.

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First Claim