From KTVI News, June 29, 2005

Local doctors are using a new device to help people who have a hole in their heart.

The hole closes for most of us at birth or right after birth, but not for everyone. Roughly one in four people has that tiny hole in the heart, and it usually causes no problems at all. But that wasn''t the case for a navy pilot from the east side.

Mike Musegades said, "I woke up one morning and looked at the ceiling and there was a blind spot or a black spot." It was a year and a half before military doctors diagnosed Mike with what''s known as a PF0 or hole in his heart.

Doctors say the hole in the heart acts like a trap door. Dr. John Lasala from Barnes-Jewish Hospital says, "That trap door, that residual opening opened at the wrong time, the clot went through it, and instead of ending up in the lungs where it harmlessly would be dissolved, it ended up on the other side of the heart where it could go to the brain and cause a stroke."

Instead of open heart surgery, Dr. Lasala used a new device to fix the hole. It''s a flexible mesh plug called an amplatzer. "What''s good about this is that I can take this and load this into a delivery system and have it just pop right in."

Doctors use an echocardiogram to guide the catheter to the right spot to deliver the plug. "So let''s say that''s on the left side of the heart and then we''ll pull it back a little more and we''ll deploy it on the right side of the heart. You can see that we''ve sealed off that small communication...it''s very simple and we''ve done enough that we can do it in 15-20 minutes from skin to skin."

Mike says, "For about six weeks I had to take it easy and couldn''t lift anything real heavy or anything. But after that I was back to full speed."

Again, for most people with this condition, it causes no problems or they have to go on blood thinners. The amplatzer is a cath lab procedure. Mike was in the hospital for just a day. He hopes to be flying again before long.