Spontaneous closure of interatrial septal openings in infants: an echocardiographic study

Clinical Characteristics and Outcome of Incidental Atrial Septal Openings in Very Low Birth Weight Infants

“…They have no evident clinical significance, and close spontaneously at 2-3 years of age. In previous studies, the incidence of ASOs in healthy full-term neonates was observed to be 24-70% at the first week of life [11,12]. In the present study, the incidence of ASOs in VLBW infants was found to be 40.3% in the first week of life.…”

“…The reported rates of spontaneous closure vary substantially, and have been reported as 4% [21], 70% [17], 87% [15] and 99.8% [11] in various studies. These differences can be explained by differences in the selection of the study population.…”

The prevalence of interatrial septal openings in newborns and predictive factors for spontaneous closure

“…In different studies the incidence of IASOs was reported to be between 63.6% and 78.0%, 67.8%, 92.0% in children who were less than 1 year of age [5,11], at 2-7 days of age [6] and at 1 h of age [12] respectively. Our results (78.1% for term neonates and 83.3% for preterm neonates, overall 78.6%) were comparable with the other studies.…”

“…Since there are no definitive diagnostic criteria for both patent foramen ovale (PFO) and secundum atrial septal defects (ASD), it is difficult to differentiate these two lesions, particularly in the newborn period. We, as some authors [5,6], called these two lesions as ''interatrial septal openings (IASOs)''. The objectives of this study were to establish the prevalence of IASOs diagnosed in the first days of life, to define the natural course of them during the first year of life, and to find the factors affecting the spontaneous closure.…”

Interatrial defect and patent ductus arteriosus

“…Since there are no definitive diagnostic criteria for both patent foramen ovale and secundum atrial septal defects, it is difficult to differentiate these two lesions by echocardiography, particularly in the early newborn period. Some authors, called these two lesions as "interatrial septal openings (IASOs)" [20][21][22]. We greatly appreciated the letter to the Editor by Rana Olgunturk and Serdar Kula [1] but the diagnosis was made not only on the basis of the first observation but also on the basis of the persistence of abnormalities during the longterm follow-up and therefore the infant was referred to a pediatric heart surgical unit where the abnormalities were confirmed.…”