Deans' stroke musings: Patent foramen ovale in patients with cryptogenic stroke: to close or not to close?

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Patent foramen ovale in patients with cryptogenic stroke: to close or not to close?

For discussions with your doctor.

More info here:

PFO (22 posts to March 2012)

Patent foramen ovale in patients with cryptogenic stroke: to close or not to close?

03 Jun 2025

Dr. Davide Forno

Dr. Riccardo Asteggiano , FESC

Dr. Iris Parrini

Evidence exists supporting percutaneous patent foramen ovale (PFO) closure and medical therapy versus medical therapy alone in selected patients with cryptogenic stroke (CS). However, the procedure may be associated with cardiac complications. Transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE), despite its limitations, is considered the ‘gold standard’ for PFO diagnosis but an unequivocal diagnostic algorithm for the detection of PFO and its treatment is still lacking. The Pascal classification system recommends PFO closure plus antiplatelet therapy in selected patients aged under 60 years (essentially those with a large right-to-left shunt or an atrial septal aneurysm), without other evident cause of stroke.