Those of us who meet regularly in pediatric cardiology conferences are familiar with the difficulties of communicating exact anatomy of simple or complex hearts to fellows, colleagues, and our surgical friends. Nomenclature is easily misunderstood when we use terms like "dextroversion," "dextrocardia," or "upstairs/downstairs hearts." Our catheterization colleagues have long given up the "block diagrams" and have often spent excessive time (with better or poorer skill) in drawing an anatomically meaningful diagram for presentation.
The Diagrammatic Atlas of Drs Mullins and Mayer attempts to address this difficulty by providing a series of 167 basic diagrams to accurately present "every possible combination and permutation of congenital heart lesions." These diagrams provide easy identification of right vs left ventricular morphology, mitral-aortic continuity, situs, aortic arches, anomalous veins, etc. For a given heart you photocopy the diagram of your choice (facilitated by the ring binder format of the Atlas), use correction fluid and