Congenital Heart Disease in Twins

Abstract

THE familial nature of congenital heart disease has become increasingly apparent.^{1 2 3} However, a major obstacle to the acceptance of a significant genetic role in the etiology of congenital heart defects has been the failure to demonstrate that when 1 member of a set of identical twins is affected with a congenital heart lesion, the co-twin is also affected.Uchida and Rowe⁴ found no concordance for congenital heart disease in 13 monozygotic twin pairs nor in 13 sets of dizygotic twins in which 1 member had a congenital heart defect. A similar lack of concordance was discovered by Campbell,⁵ who reported . . .