Page 30 - Journal of Structural Heart Disease Volume 4, Issue 5

225 Original Scientific Article
Figure 2. Panel A. Diagram of different treatment arms for recurrent stroke prevention. Panel B. Forest plot of mixed treatment com- parisons showing statistically significant reduction of recurrent strokes with PFO closure only when compared to antiplatelet therapy. Both fixed and random effect models are shown.
The network included a total of 2821 patients. PFO closure was performed in 1332 patients, 1070 patients received antiplatelet therapy alone and 419 patients received oral anticoagulation alone (Figure 2A). There was significant reduction of recurrent strokes with PFO closure when compared to antiplatelet therapy alone (OR 0.29, CrI 0.07-0.84). On the other hand, the
reduction in recurrent stroke when PFO closure was compared to oral anticoagulation was not statistically significant (OR 0.52, CrI 0.1-1.92). Moreover, the differ- ence between oral anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy in recurrent stroke reduction was also non statistically significant (OR 0.55, CrI 0.13-2.14). Het- erogeneity assessment by τ2 was 0.9. Network com-
Mina G. et al.
Meta-Analysis of PFO Closure for Stroke Prevention