Web based “Global Virtual Museum of Congenital Cardiac Pathology”

Significant advances have been made in the care of children with cardiac disease. Most advances have been guided by anatomical and functional understanding of the changes from normal imposed by the cardiac malformations. As survival has increased, it has become rare to obtain untreated and unaltered hearts for morphologic examination. This limited availability of new specimens, coupled with the inevitable deterioration of currently available specimens, means that alternative methods of “preservation” become increasingly important. In this review, we propose and outline a format for the development of a Global Virtual Museum of Congenital Cardiac Pathology, based on established principles of anatomical analysis, classification based on an internationally accepted nomenclature (The International Pediatric and Congenital Cardiac Code or IPCCC), and the use of digital methods of storage of images and videos. In this fashion, we hope to preserve, in a virtual sense, the currently available anatomical specimens.