A story similar to mine - a stroke that came out of nowhere. One woman's story about the undiscovered hole in the heart can lead to a stroke:
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| A still shot of the repair of my hole in the heart. Click here to read more about it. |
“I had four strokes,” Dean said. “A clot ran up from my leg, broke off a piece into my lung and the other half went into a hole in my heart that I didn't know I had and it went into my head and sprayed into four strokes.”
It’s called patent foramen ovale (PFO), Latin for “open oval window.” It is a small hole located in the upper chamber of the heart, which makes it possible for a baby in utero to get blood from the placenta through the umbilical cord to the heart, but it typically closes a few months after birth.
Pediatric cardiologist Dr. Jim Thompson of Inova Fairfax Hospital also performs surgeries that close up those holes in the heart in adults.
“About 20 percent of all adults have PFO,” he said. “Now most people have very small PFOs, they're not clinically significant, and they'll go their whole life without even knowing they have it, however if you look at young people who have strokes for no reason and doctors can't find a reason that you had a stroke, about 50 percent of those patients have a PFO.”
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