The team at Arizona Heart Arrhythmia Associates can diagnose your structural heart defect and provide treatments to keep your heart working as it should. Minimally invasive heart surgery is a technique that allows surgeons to operate on the heart through a smaller chest incision.A patent foramen ovale (PFO) is a hole in the heart that should have closed after birth. A hole in the wall separating the two lower chambers. Patent Foramen Ovale: A small opening between the two upper chambers that fails to seal after birth. A patent foramen ovale (PFO) is a hole in the heart that didn't close the way it should after birth. Learn more about the causes and complications of this condition in which a hole in the heart doesn't close the way it should after birth. To refer your patient for PFO closure, contact an interventional cardiologist and ask about the Amplatzerâ„¢ Talismanâ„¢ PFO Occluder. A patent foramen ovale occurs when a hole that is always present in a newborn's heart fails to close as it should once the lungs begin to function after birth. Patent foramen ovale closure is a procedure to close a hole in the heart.