What is Coarctation?

The aorta is the major blood vessel that carries blood away from the heart to the body. When someone has coarctation of the aorta, the aorta is narrowed at some point.

Here’s how a healthy heart and aorta work: Blood that needs oxygen comes from all over the body and enters the right side of the heart, which pumps it to the lungs. The lungs fill the blood with oxygen, and this oxygen-rich blood returns from the lungs to the left side of the heart. The left side of the heart finishes up by pumping the blood out through the aorta. From the aorta, the blood travels through arteries that reach all of the body’s organs and tissues, bringing them oxygen. Then the blood returns to the heart through veins and begins the cycle once again.

When part of the aorta is narrowed (this is a coarctation), that defect can affect the body’s blood circulation because the left side of the heart has to work harder to pump blood through the narrowed aorta.

Sometimes the narrowing is minor and might not even cause symptoms. In other cases, the aorta is more constricted, placing a strain on the heart’s left ventricle (the chamber that pumps blood to the aorta and out to the body).

A coarctation can occur anywhere in the aorta, but most often is found after the point where the arteries that carry blood to the upper body and head branch off from the aorta.