14th International Congress
THE "NEW FRONTIERS"
OF ARRHYTHMIAS 2000

Jan. 29 - Feb. 5, 2000
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-25

Scuba divers with patent foramen ovale at risk for decompression illness

Domenico Cartoni, Maria Penco*, Stefano De Castro, Giuliana Valente***, Corrado Costanzo***, Antonio Pelliccia****, Laura Vitali Serdoz, Rachele Adorisio**, Francesco Fedele**.
Department of Clinical Medicine, *Cardiology of University of L’Aquila, **Department of Cardiovascular and Respiratory Sciences, La Sapienza University, ***Centro Iperbarico Romano, ****Istituto di Scienza dello Sport, CONI, Rome, Italy

Introduction

Patent foramen ovale (PFO) is a remnant of the fetal circulation considered for long time an anatomic finding without specific pathological implications. Large autoptical and instrumental studies, investigating the persistence of PFO in the adults, state a prevalence of this abnormality in 20-35% of normal population¹. Because of its valve-like nature, PFO may permit right-to-left shunt as a result of transient instantaneous pressure gradient between the right and the left atrium during the cardiac cycle even without the need of a pathological (i.e. pulmonary hypertension states) or physiological (i.e. Valsalva maneuvers or correlates) augmentation². Contrast transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is considered the non-invasive method of choice in the diagnosis and morphological analysis of atrial septum shunts, and hence PFO³.