PFO Video

[DiveLife]

Hi everyone,

After many requests to view, i thought this video of my PFO might be of interest to a few people.

www.divelife.co.uk/Index/Video/Other/PFO/pfo.wmv

Proves i'm not heartless if nothing else.

[Paul Morris]

Wow, thanks for going to the trouble of obtaining, transcoding and sharing your ultrasound.

Can anyone come along and explain the orientation, and what we're looking for. Its a bit like trying to work out bottom type from an echosounder trace.. something I confess to having little clue about. :confused:

[Helen (AKA Hellvet)]

This will be a bit of a simplification so apologies to any doctors watching...

You're looking at the left ventricle from where blood goes off to the rest of the body. Blood reaching here has already passed through the lungs so the bubbles should have been filtered out by the lungs, so if you see any bubbles appearing it means they have bypassed the lungs.

The bottom of the ventricle is at the top of the picture, and the valve between the left atrium and ventricle(the 2 left heart chambers) is the flapping bit at the bottom of the picture, so fluid is moving from the bottom of the picture to the top, then out of the heart. The normal appearance of this type of ultrasound is fluid on the inside of the chamber appears as black, and the walls of the heart appear white, and bubbles show up as a rush of white flecks.

A PFO positive test shows a rush of white flecks (bubbles) - positive is more than a few bubbles - here is a definite positive as there is a huge rush of white flecks almost causing a white out- mine looked just like that too!

Hope that helps
Helen

[Paul Morris]

Thanks for the explanation, I see it now. What a fantastic teaching aid, but probably a bit heavy to shoe-horn into Ocean Diver...