Can congenital heart defects or certain drugs result in increased cardiac output? what else causes it? mine is 7.2lmin squared.

Yes: Medications and certain medical conditions can raise your cardiac output. But before going further, we need to know how you had your cardiac output measured, since the technique itself can give us some answers.

CO = HR x SV: Cardiac output (co) is the volume of blood pumped per minute, and related to heart rate (hr) and stroke volume (sv) (volume per heart beat). It can be affected by many bodily activities. An increase in either hr or sv can result in inceased co. So any drug that increases hr (caffeine, etc) can result in incresed co. Certain congenital heart defects (such as septal defects) can alter co.