Silent anomalies of the urinary tract and congenital heart disease.

Postangiocardiographic screening of infants and children with congenital heart disease for silent anomalies of the urinary tract yielded an incidence of 7.7 percent in 260 so studied. The incidence was 29 percent in 21 babies who came to autopsy and had been studied at catheterization but without this screening. Patients with atrial septal defect had the highest incidence of urinary tract anomalies, while those with ventricular septal defect and tetralogy had an average incidence. Some of the lesions discovered were potentially significant even though silent. They were found with sufficient frequency to warrant routine use of this screening technique at cardiac catheterization.