The Impact of Congenital Heart Defects. Understand Your Risk. Symptoms and Diagnosis. Care and Treatment. Tools and Resources. Very little of this less oxygenated blood mixes with the oxygenated blood. Instead of going back through the foramen ovale, it goes into the right ventricle. This less oxygenated blood is pumped from the right ventricle into the pulmonary artery.
A small amount of the blood continues on to the lungs. Most of this blood is shunted through the ductus arteriosus to the descending aorta. This blood then enters the umbilical arteries and flows into the placenta. In the placenta, carbon dioxide and waste products are released into the mother's circulatory system.
Oxygen and nutrients from the mother's blood are released into the fetus' blood. At birth, the umbilical cord is clamped and the baby no longer gets oxygen and nutrients from the mother.
With the first breaths of life, the lungs start to expand. As the lungs expand, the alveoli in the lungs are cleared of fluid. The fetus gets life support from the mother through the placenta. Waste products and carbon dioxide from the fetus are sent back through the umbilical cord and placenta to the mother's circulation to be removed. The fetal circulatory system uses 3 shunts. These are small passages that direct blood that needs to be oxygenated. The purpose of these shunts is to bypass the lungs and liver.
That's because these organs will not work fully until after birth. The shunt that bypasses the lungs is called the foramen ovale. This shunt moves blood from the right atrium of the heart to the left atrium.
The ductus arteriosus moves blood from the pulmonary artery to the aorta. Oxygen and nutrients from the mother's blood are sent across the placenta to the fetus. The enriched blood flows through the umbilical cord to the liver and splits into 3 branches. The blood then reaches the inferior vena cava. If a PDA is suspected, the doctor will use a stethoscope to listen for a heart murmur , which is often heard in babies with PDAs.
Follow-up tests might include:. The three treatment options for PDA are medicine, catheter-based procedures , and surgery. A doctor will close a PDA if the size of the opening is big enough that the lungs could become overloaded with blood, a condition that can lead to an enlarged heart. A doctor also might close a PDA to reduce the risk of developing a heart infection known as endocarditis , which affects the tissue lining the heart and blood vessels.
Endocarditis is serious and requires treatment with intravenous IV antibiotics. Reviewed by: Gina Baffa, MD. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size.
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