People who inject drugs are dying at an alarming rate from endocarditis, a serious but treatable heart-valve infection. But their odds of survival improve dramatically, even five years after their first admission to hospital, ...
Oct 4, 2024
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A drug used to treat a form of pneumonia has been recalled after testing found it might be as deadly as the infection it's supposed to treat.
Apr 4, 2024
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Public reporting on aortic valve replacement outcomes has resulted in fewer valve surgeries for people with endocarditis, a new study has found. The researchers looked at national data from people with injection drug use ...
Oct 11, 2019
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A new study finds the number of patients hospitalized with endocarditis has increased dramatically over the last decade in a pattern that mirrors the increase in mixed drug use. The nearly decade-long retrospective study ...
Apr 26, 2018
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(HealthDay)—There's another alarming consequence to America's heroin and prescription painkiller epidemic: an increase in a serious heart infection called endocarditis, U.S. health officials report.
Jun 8, 2017
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Individuals who inject drugs are at risk of endocarditis, a bacterial infection that enters the bloodstream and clusters on the valves of the heart. The infection requires prolonged antibiotic treatment and, in some cases, ...
Sep 13, 2016
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Patients who develop an infection of the heart valves called bacterial endocarditis have an elevated risk of stroke beginning four months before, and up to five months after diagnosis. This is a period significantly longer ...
Jul 14, 2015
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(HealthDay)—The 2007 American Heart Association guidelines recommending a restriction of antibiotic prophylaxis have not increased the rates of hospitalization or adjusted mortality for endocarditis among Medicare beneficiaries, ...
Sep 15, 2013
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(HealthDay) -- For patients with infective endocarditis and large vegetations, early surgery reduces death from any cause and embolic events, compared with conventional treatment, according to a study published in the June ...
Jun 28, 2012
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Surgery significantly improves short- and long-term outcomes in patients with heart failure caused by a bacterial infection known as endocarditis, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers.
Nov 22, 2011
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Endocarditis is an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart, the endocardium. It usually involves the heart valves (native or prosthetic valves). Other structures that may be involved include the interventricular septum, the chordae tendineae, the mural endocardium, or even on intracardiac devices. Endocarditis is characterized by a prototypic lesion, the vegetation, which is a mass of platelets, fibrin, microcolonies of microorganisms, and scant inflammatory cells. In the subacute form of infective endocarditis, the vegetation may also include a center of granulomatous tissue, which may fibrose or calcify.
There are multiple ways to classify endocarditis. The simplest classification is based on etiology: either infective or non-infective, depending on whether a microorganism is the source of the inflammation or not. Regardless, diagnosis of endocarditis is based on the clinical features, investigations such as echocardiogram, as well as any blood cultures demonstrating the presence of endocarditis-causing microorganisms.
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