Epilepsy and patent foramen ovale: intervene or wait

Abstract Background: To date, no large-scale analysis has been conducted examining the association between PFO and epilepsy, especially in the Chinese population. The purpose of this study is to investigate the demographic characteristics of PFO patients, the clinical characteristics of PFO in patients with epilepsy, and the effect of PFO embolization in seizure attack. Methods: Consecutive patients who are diagnosed as PFO, are recruited for this study. All patients had performed the brain MRI examination, transesophageal echocardiograpy (TEE), EEG, ECG, transthoracic echocardiogram with bubble contrast (TTE). Epilepsy patients has a definite diagnosis of epilepsy determined by at least two epileptologists. Results: One hundred and ten patients finished the entire estimation. The patients went to see the doctor with different chief complaints, which included seizure, headache, dizziness, cerebral infarction or TIA, chest pain or palpitation and conventional examination. The proportion of chief complaints of chest tightness or palpitation is higher in the group less than 18 years old, and the proportion of headache and seizure are higher in the group older than 18 years old (p<0.05). The age of admission in the epileptic group (27.00±13.58) is significantly lower than the non-epileptic group (37.64±20.56), and also lower than the patients with headache as the chief complaint (38.73±12.09) (p<0.05). Comparison of general condition and therapeutic effect between PFO occlusion group and non-PFO closure group, there is no significant difference in sex, age, seizure type, number of AEDs and seizure frequency before and after PFO closure. Conclusion: No difference between PFO closure or not. Due to the small number of cases, it is necessary to further expand the sample size to obtain accurate results.