Jennifer Matthews: As a nurse's assistant, Stephen Campbell knows when symptoms are serious.
Stephen Campbell: I couldn't swallow very well. I couldn't speak very well. I looked in the mirror and realized I had a facial droop, which from experience I know is one of the signs and symptoms of a stroke.
Jennifer Matthews: Steven had just become one of tens of thousands of otherwise healthy young people who suffer minor strokes every year.
Dr. Jonathan Tobis: What has been found is that a large percentage of these patients have a little hole in their heart which communicates between the right and the left sides of the heart.
Jennifer Matthews: UCLA cardiologist, Jonathan Tobis discovered that Campbell had just such a hole in his heart, called a patent foramen ovale, or PFO.
Dr. Jonathan Tobis: That permits little blood clots to go from the veins through the heart and then go up to the brain where it would lodge in the brain and arteries and cause a stroke.
Jennifer Matthews: Dr. Tobis used a new procedure to fix the problem, a clamshell-shaped patch called a CardioSEAL. It is fed through the leg to the heart. The usual method is open-heart surgery.
Stephen Campbell: The open-heart, I think, has a six-week recovery and it's not very comfortable, from what I understand, recovering from. I'm very thankful that this procedure was here and that there were doctors who could do it.
Jennifer Matthews: Steven spent just one night in the hospital, and says he feels like a normal 30-year old. This is Jennifer Matthews reporting.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services