Monday, October 30, 2006

Doctors Ponder Fixing Heart Defect - Forbes.com: "In the late 1990s, cardiologists started aggressively sealing PFOs in stroke survivors, in hopes of lowering their risk for further strokes. They threaded tiny implants into the heart through a hole in the groin, pulling them against the PFO's flap to seal it shut.

Then some implant recipients started reporting an odd side effect: Their migraine headaches went away. Subsequent research suggested at least 40 percent of people who suffer a severe type of migraine - the kind that comes with an 'aura' or visual disturbance - have fairly large PFOs."