Hearts having a common arterial trunk belong to a family of congenital cardiac malformations for which traditional systems of classification and nomenclature are plagued by internal paradoxes, incompatibility between systems due to the lack of potential for identification of synonyms, or irreconcilable inconsistencies with our current knowledge of cardiac development and morphology. A simplified categorisation that classifies these hearts on the basis of pulmonary or aortic dominance reconciles the existing disparate categorisations, is in keeping with recent findings concerning cardiac development, and emphasises the principal morphologic determinant of surgical outcome.
