Active clinical trials for "Foramen Ovale, Patent"

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a condition which involves episodes of interrupted breathing during sleep due to repetitive narrowing or collapse of the throat. These episodes are usually associated with a drop in blood oxygen levels and brief awakenings, which disrupt the sleep of those affected and can lead to daytime sleepiness. OSA is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. In some individuals, the low oxygen levels in the blood can be made worse by also having a small hole in the heart, called a patent foramen ovale (PFO). This hole is present at birth in everyone, but in some people (about 30% of the normal population) it fails to close. Usually a PFO does not cause any medical problems. However, it may be recommended to have a PFO closed by key-hole surgery if someone suffers a stroke, severe migraine or if they are professional divers. There is a higher incidence of PFO in patients with OSA (25-50%) compared to the wider population and this may account for some of the observed increased risk of heart disease and stroke in patients with OSA. This study will assess the number of patients with OSA who also have a PFO, and whether closing the PFO can improve the symptoms of OSA (e.g. sleepiness, exercise capacity and general well-being), thereby enabling the patient to not be reliant on treatment for OSA. If the study shows that closing the PFO is beneficial then the investigators will assess in a larger study if this treatment can also reduce heart disease and strokes.

Patients with a patent foramen ovale in the setting of endocardially placed cardiac implantable electronic devices such as pacemakers, defibrillators, or resynchronization therapies are likely at higher risk for paradoxical embolic events from device lead thrombus. The investigators are conducting this study to determine if the anticoagulant medication Apixaban is more effective at reducing MRI detected brain lesions compared to placebo.

The foramen ovale, a kind of physiologic channel in the interatrial septum in the heart at embryonic stage, is closed normally at 5-7 months after birth. When it is not closed, it is referred to as the patent foramen ovale (PFO), which is found in approximately 1/4 of general population. It was shown in the studies in recent years that the risks of cryptogenic stroke, migraine, peripheral arterial embolism and decompression sickness in the patients with PFO were several times higher than those in healthy people. Therefore, PFO, previously considered a condition without the necessity of treatment, causes the attention of many experts and scholars around the world. Migraine with or without aura is defined as one of the most disabling chronic diseases, since according to WHO, the disability adjusted life year caused by migraine was second only to that by non-fatal stroke in 2005. In recent years, an increasing number of researches suggested that migraine is closely related to the right-to-left shunt (RLS) in the heart. And PFO is clinically considered as the most common cause of RLS. The closure treatment for PFO-induced migraine has been gradually applied in several hospitals in China. The relationship of PFO with migraine, however, was not evaluated systematically based on specific standards, unfortunately leading to non-inclusion of many high-risk patients with PFO in the evaluation. The following aspects are to be fully recognized: the selecting and screening procedures for the high-risk population with PFO-induced migraine; the indications and standards of closure treatment for PFO in the patients with PFO-induced migraine; and the possibility that the made-in-China occluders substitute for those imported in the prevention from migraine. Furthermore, there is still a lack of prospective, multi-center, randomized and controlled studies in this subject, and standard or normal screening and treatment procedures have not yet been established in China. From this point, the investigators developed the Chinese people-specific procedures and standards of diagnosis of PFO-induced migraine in this study, based on current standards and methods of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of PFO-induced migraine in foreign countries. And the investigators prospectively adopted continuous inclusion of the high-risk patients with PFO-induced migraine, who were randomly divided into the closure treatment (transcatheter closure of PFO) group and the medication (drugs administered alone) group at the ratio of 1:1., in order to evaluate if the interventional treatment is better than the medication alone in these patients, to assess the efficacy and safety of the made-in-China occluders in the interventional treatment and prevention of PFO-induced migraine, and to identify the incidence of PFO in the patients with migraine in China and develop the Chinese people-specific screening protocols of PFO-induced migraine.

The primary objective of the study is to determine whether the STARFlex® septal closure system will safely and effectively prevent a recurrent embolic stroke/transient ischemic attack (TIA) and mortality in patients with a PFO and to demonstrate superiority of the STARFlex® device compared to best medical therapy.

The purpose of the STITCH study is to evaluate closure rates of clinically relevant septal defects, including patent foramen ovale (PFO), Atrial Septal Defects (ASD - less than 1 cm with redundant septal tissue), trans septal puncture sites, repair of Atrial Septal Aneurysm (ASA) and rate of recurrent neurologic embolic events in patients with cryptogenic stroke and PFO.

The study sought to assess the rate of recurrent stroke and death in stroke patients with a patent foramen ovale randomized to treatment with warfarin or aspirin. This was a multicenter study conducted at 48 U.S. Institutions.

A stroke is the second cause of deaths after heart attack, one of the most important causes of malfunction as far as adults are concerned and the second as for the frequency cause of dementia. In spite of a possibility of the therapy of stroke ( tissue plasminogen activator) and recognized most of risk factors there is expected that incidence rate on stroke connected with ageing of the society will be growing. It will cause medical and social consequences. There are many of potential causes of cardiac strokes, which are not entirely examined. More over many cryptogenic strokes are presumed to have an embolic etiology, and the frequent cause of these kind of strokes at young age is probably the mechanism of paradoxical embolism through patent foramen ovale. As far as the investigators are concerned, at present there is lack of any recommendations for these scientific hypothesis.

Among consecutive 47 cryptogenic stroke patients who underwent PFO closure, a serial follow-up bubble contrast TEE at 3 and 9 months after the index procedure was completed in 38 patients (81%, 46±10 years, 19 men). To evaluate the efficacy of PFO closure, the incidence of any- and significant residual shunt (≥moderate) was assessed.

The purpose of the study is to compare the rate of comorbidities associated with migraine aura (MA) between persons who have a large circulatory right-to-left shunt (RLS) and those who do not have RLS. Approximately 50% of individuals who have MA also have RLS due to patent foramen ovale (PFO). A PFO is an anatomical opening or flap between the upper chambers of the heart or atria that permits blood to pass from the right of the heart to the left side of the heart, without first going to the lungs to be filtered and oxygenated. Many health conditions and clinical syndromes including stroke, sleep apnea, and migraine have been linked to PFO. Although the mechanism is undetermined, it is hypothesized that microscopic blood clots and chemicals such as serotonin can pass through the PFO, travel to the brain, and cause headache and aura. Persons who have MA are at increased risk for stroke and transient ischemic attacks relative to people who do not have migraine. Migraine is also associated with the presence of white matter lesions in the brain and mild deficits in cognitive function associated with the posterior brain (vision, memory, processing speed). The risk of stroke in migraine is highest for women under the age of 45 who have aura and a high number of migraine headache days per month. No convincing evidence has been produced to explain the mechanism for the increased risk of ischemic stroke in migraine; however, increased platelet activation and aggregation is a plausible theory. We hypothesize that migraineurs with aura and large RLS (presumably due to a PFO) will be more likely to have sleep apnea, increased platelet activation, cognitive deficits, alterations in cerebral vasomotor function, and white matter lesions than migraineurs with aura who do not have PFO. The results of this exploratory study will generate hypotheses as to why subgroups of migraineurs have an increased risk of stroke and the impact of large PFO on comorbid conditions associated with migraine aura. Early identification of migraine subgroups with a constellation of clinical syndromes that increase risk of neurovascular diseases will allow initiation of preventive strategies that may ultimately reduce burden and improve the productive quality of life for these individuals.

A patent foramen ovale (PFO) is present in ~30% of the general population. The PFO has historically been considered to be trivial. However, recent work by the investigator's group and others has identified that, compared to individuals without a PFO, those with a PFO have worse pulmonary gas exchange efficiency, have a higher core body temperature, blunted ventilatory responses to chronic hypoxia and acute carbon dioxide and increased susceptibility to altitude illnesses such as acute mountain sickness, and high altitude pulmonary edema (Lovering, Elliott & Davis J Appl Physiol 2016). Specific to this application,subjects with a PFO may have worse pulmonary gas exchange efficiency because a PFO is a potential source of right-to-left shunt that will make pulmonary gas exchange efficiency worse. If true, then this may negatively impact exercise capacity and/or exercise tolerance. Further, in those with a PFO compared to those without, preliminary work from the investigator's lab indicates that there may be an effect of PFO size on pulmonary gas exchange efficiency. This is such that those with a large PFO (grade 3 or higher) display significantly worse gas exchange efficiency compared to those with a small (grade 2 or lower) or no PFO,even at low exercise workloads. Additionally, the investigators were curious as to whether there would be a sex effect, but due to logistical constraints, the investigators were unable to recruit an equal number of female and male subjects. Thus, in addition to the potential size effect on the investigators outcome measures, the investigators would like to build on this work by examining the potential effect of biological sex. Although a PFO has been traditionally considered to have a minimal impact of physiology and pathophysiology, emerging evidence suggests this may not be the case. The investigator's lab is focused on understanding how and why a relatively small hole in the heart (PFO) can have a relatively large impact on cardiopulmonary and respiratory physiology, and how these impacts may be based on the size of the PFO.