Congenital Heart Disease among Mental Defectives and an Assessment of Cardiac Survey Methods

Abstract

THE frequency of congenital and acquired heart disease has been investigated by a variety of methods in many different population groups, but mental defectives have not received comparable attention. Mautner¹ recently made a clinical study at a state institution, but confined his observations to mongolism and gave no figures of prevalence.The purpose of the present study was to assess the over-all frequency of heart disease in mental deficiency with particular reference to the presence of congenital lesions. We were also interested in the occurrence of congenital heart disease among persons with different types of mental retardation, especially mongolism, because . . .