MINI-SYMPOSIUM

When and how to diagnose patent foramen ovale

F J Pinto

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Fausto J Pinto
Department Cardiology—Univ Hospital Sta Maria, 1699 Lisboa—Portugal; fpinto@icvl.pt

Abbreviations: DCI, decompression illness; PFO, patent foramen ovale, TOE, transoesophageal echocardiography; TTE, transthoracic echocardiography

Keywords: patent foramen ovale

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Patent foramen ovale (PFO) is a common finding in the healthy population, with a prevalence of 27% in one necropsy study of 965 normal hearts from patients with no history of cardioembolic events.¹ It is also the most common cardiac finding in young patients (< 55 years of age) with an unexplained cerebrovascular event, presumably caused by paradoxical emboli.² The presumed mechanism is the migration of a thrombus (or less commonly air or fat) from the venous system to the left atrium via a PFO, with subsequent systemic embolisation. Determining whether paradoxical embolism has occurred through a PFO ideally requires the presence of the PFO "triad", which combines raised right atrial pressure, venous source of thrombosis, and the presence of PFO. The larger size of a PFO and greater number of microbubbles passing through a shunt during echocardiography has also been associated with an increased incidence of cerebrovascular events^3,4

Although . . . [Full text of this article]

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