[Pulmonary sling in a patient with anomalous intrathoracic heart displacement (diagnosis and surgical treatment)].

The pulmonary sling is the origin of the left pulmonary artery from the right one, this is a rare abnormality giving a marked clinical picture. The paper presents a case of solely rare combination of the pulmonary of the pulmonary sling with abnormal cardiac placement--dextroversion. A three-year-old child underwent explorative thoracotomy for erroneously diagnosed mediastinal cyst. The thoracotomy revealed a suspected pulmonary sling. To make an accurate diagnosis, a comprehensive study (chest X-ray with esophageal contrasting, tracheobronchography, echocardiography, digital subtraction angiography) was performed. Echocardiography clearly showed the absence of bifurcation of the pulmonary trunk and the origin of the left pulmonary artery from the right one proved to be most informative, as evidenced by colour Doppler mapping. The paper deals with the specific features of surgical treatment of this pathology (the patient was successfully operated on through lateral sternotomy by using extracorporeal circulation). The good functional result of the operation was confirmed by echocardiography and angiography.