6 February 2025

PFO and Diving

Dr Oli Firth, the Diving Shaman

Modern life is infested with an unwelcome profusion of TLA's*, leading to potentially excruciating misunderstandings. Medicine has to take its fair share of blame for this. PFO, for example, can relate to:

The lunatic going crazy in A&E under the influence of an undefined noxious substance: a "Paranoid" or "Premature Freak Out"
The mechanism behind a hazily recalled drunken injury: "P***ed, Fell Over"
The polite but final rejection of an unwanted amorous approach: "Please F*** Off"

In this article, however, we'll concentrate on its more widely accepted meaning, that of Patent Foramen Ovale. Classicists will know that a foramen is a hole, and no points for guessing that a PFO is an oval-shaped one that's still open. This particular aperture lies between the two upper chambers of the heart, the atria (see diagram). The wall between these chambers is called the septum, and hence a PFO is one of a number of so-called Atrial Septal Defects, or ASD's. SFW, I hear you cry. Read on... *Three Letter Acronyms. TLA is a fine example of an autological word (a word that describes itself). My favourite of these has to be "sesquipedalian", an adjective meaning "given to using long words"...

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