A congenital condition where a person is born with only half of a normal heart structure, or a heart that is abnormally underdeveloped on one side.
From Greek 'hemi-' (half) plus 'cardia' (from 'kardia' meaning heart). This rare medical condition was first formally documented by pathologists in the 19th century.
Hemicardia is incompatible with life in its severe forms, but studying it revealed how the heart develops—by seeing what goes wrong when half develops, doctors learned how the two halves normally coordinate and fuse during fetal development.
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