Atrial and ventricular septal defects can safely be closed by percutaneous intervention

Various transcatheter devices and methods to close congenital heart defects are currently available. Devices have been designed specifically for atrial septal defect (ASD), patent foramen ovale (PFO), and ventricular septal defect (VSD) closure. The trend in interventional treatment of intracardiac shunts shows toward defect-specific systems. The PFO is a tunnel defect requiring occluders that adapt to its length while common ASD strongly vary in their diameter, making a large scale of device sizes indispensable. VSDs are predominantly sealed by coils or tissue-adapted devices like muscular or perimembranous occluders. Since VSDs may occur with an aneurysm (VSA), a multi-perforated septum, an instable myocardial situation (postinfarction) or a high interventricular pressure gradient, closure of these defects is regarded sometimes as complicated. But during the last 30 years (since King and Mills implanted the first double-umbrella occluding system) several studies have proven procedure efficacy and safety of both ASD and VSD closure. This article reviews a large scale of studies and includes our single center data on 1,609 PFO, ASD, and VSD patients.