Prevalence of patent foramen ovale in the Greek population is high and impacts on the interpretation of the risk of paradoxical embolism (RoPE) score.
Ioanna KoutroulouGeorgios K TsivgoulisDimitris KaracostasIgnatios IkonomidisNikolaos GrigoriadisTheodoros KarapanayiotidesPublished in: Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders (2020)
PFO prevalence in the Greek population is much higher than the widely accepted 25%. PFO may be the cause of stroke in one out of nine Greek patients with CS. Among Greek CS patients who harbor a PFO, the latter is causal in one out of five. The established RoPE score cutoff of ⩾7 for having a probable PFO-associated stroke may overestimate the probability in patients deriving from populations with high PFO prevalence.