Percutaneous closure of atrial septal defect and patent foramen ovale

INTRODUCTION Over the past decades, transcatheter techniques for closure of atrial septal defects (ASD) and patent foramen ovale (PFO) have emerged not only as an alternative to surgery, but as therapy of first choice inmost patients.While the first interventional devices for this purpose were afflicted with rather high rates of complications and residual shunts, current occlusion systems achieve high occlusion rates and complications are rare.