Rates of infective endocarditis (IE) and associated procedures have actually grown considerably in the United States (US) in current years due to increasing intravenous drug use (IVDU) in the setting of the intensifying opioid epidemic. Research studies have actually revealed a 681% boost in hospital admissions for drug use- associated IE (DUA-IE) in West Virginia in between 2014 and 2018, for example, and a 12-fold boost in such admissions in North Carolina hospitals in between 2007 and 2017. 1,2
Other findings recommend that 1 in 10 patients getting cardiac care in the intensive care system (ICU) utilizes illegal drugs. 3 This pattern provides numerous difficulties to cardiac cosmetic surgeons, consisting of danger evaluation and resource allotment issues for patients who are understood to have even worse results and high rates of reinfection after a treatment compared to patients whose illness is not associated with drug use. 4
Results in DUA-IE vs Non-DUA-IE
In a 2018 retrospective accomplice research study, scientists used tendency matching to compare cardiac treatment results in between US patients with opioid use disorder (OUD; n= 11,359) and without OUD (n= 5,707,193) from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database. 5 Procedures consisted of coronary artery bypass graft, valve surgery, and aortic surgery, with greater rates of valve and aortic surgical treatments kept in mind amongst patients with OUD (49.8% vs 16.4%; P