Left Ventricular Outflow Tract Obstruction
The main pumping chamber of the heart, the left ventricle, is a muscular structure that contracts down from holding around 90ml of blood when relaxed to 30ml of blood when fully ejected.
The blood that is squeezed out of the heart must pass through a channel of muscle that can become restricted if the muscle becomes overgrown. This channel - the left ventricular outflow tract - is partly made up of the ventricular septum, the wall between the left and the right ventricles.
In some circumstances, this can enlarge or “hypertrophy” and restrict the flow of blood out of the heart. This has a similar set of symptoms or features as aortic stenosis (as it is another form of restriction of blood out of the heart to the body)
Symptoms include:
- Breathlessness
- Angina
- Fatigue
- No symptoms (found incidentally)
