[Apparent cardiac malformations in old age].

In patients aged 79, 80 and 81 cardiac malformations were found at autopsy which did not permit to decide with certainty whether they were congenital or acquired. In the first case the lesions appeared as a band-shaped fibromuscular subvalvular aortic stenosis, the second one being an isolated aneurysm of the membranous septum directed to the righ side and combined with a minute diverticulum in the muscular part of the interventricular septum. The apex of the aneurysm faced the septal cusp of the tricuspid valve. From its dorsocranial circumference two tunnel-like formations projected in the dorsocranial direction terminating blindly beneath the atrial septal endocardium. The ventral canal protruded into the right, the dorsal one into the left atrium. Rather marked regressive changes and areas of florid chronic inflammation were found in the terminal parts of these channels. In the third case observed the pathological lesion were aneurysms of the Valsalva sinuses.