Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Complications
By Mayo Clinic staffIn most people patent foramen ovale doesn't cause complications. There's disagreement about whether patent foramen ovale is a cause or risk factor for some medical conditions. Possible complications may include:
Stroke
Stroke is an interruption or reduction of blood supply to a part of the brain. Some studies suggest patent foramen ovale may be a cause or risk factor of stroke, particularly when no other cause of a stroke can be identified.
We all release tiny clots of blood from veins in the lower abdomen and legs that eventually lodge in the lungs and dissolve there. The theory linking patent foramen ovale and stroke is that a clot may bypass the lungs by traveling through the patent foramen ovale. The clot could then travel to the brain and block an artery. While this is possible in theory, the evidence supporting this is inconclusive.
Stroke and atrial septal aneurysm
Atrial septal aneurysm, a congenital heart defect, is a bulging of the wall (septum) that separates the right atrium and left atrium. This defect — most often bulging into the right atrium — might cause blood clots that could lead to stroke. Having both patent foramen ovale and atrial septal aneurysm may increase the risk of stroke, but more research is needed.
Migraine with aura
Migraines with aura are very painful headaches accompanied by sensations such as shimmering spots, blurred vision and blind spots. There is some evidence of link between patent foramen ovale and migraine with aura. But how this might happen isn't clear.
