Life is nothing , but the intervening time between the first heart beat and the last heart beat of an individual !
Human heart is not an ordinary organ. Right from the day 22 of fetal life , when the cardiac jelly begins to beat till the early new-born period , (In some, even longer !) it continues to evolve.
We know heart as a hemodynamic organ . But , in the fetus it is dynamic in a different sense (Embryo-dynamics) . As the mother’s heart takes care of the fetal circulation , the fetal heart concentrates on it ‘s own growth .The heart learns the lessons of life in a hard way , it has to survive the next 70 -80 years independently .
The complexity is enormous . The cardiac muscle comes from mesenchyme, the conducting system comes from ectoderm .Systematic events like , looping , partition , regression of the heart tube should occur at critical times . Apart from this , the venous and arterial connections ( Aorta IVC,SVC) develop concomitantly and has to fuse with respective chambers without any error.
It is a wonderful biological marvel happening inside every fetus without the help of any architect !
The changes do not stop at birth. It continues , well after delivery . One hole gets closed(PFO), one conduit disappears (PDA) .One chamber regress (RV) . We, expect all these things to happen in a meticulous and sequential way.
Yes , it happens in most. But , in many with altered bio – genetic forces things fail to unfold in the programmed way. It is not at all a surprise , to find some common aberration .
So , when some body is born with a congenital heart defect , don’t blame it on God .He does his job , in billions and billions of heart in the right manner .
It is our ancestral gene code that gets awry in a few !
In Hindu philosophy the defects we inherit are the wages we pay for our ancestral misdeeds .
Dr.S.Venkatesan MD 
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