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The amount of infective endocarditis didn’t rise for dental patients in Olmsted County, Minn, according to a new study.
There were new guidelines created for administering preventive antibiotics prior to dental procedures for those at the highest risk of complications. The information appears in Circulation, an American Heart Association publication.
Infective endocarditis is a bacterial problem involving the heart lining, heart valve or blood vessel. Patients with a weakened heart are more vulnerable to various types of infection compared those with healthy heart valves.
The AHA changed its guidelines in 2007, recommending that patients take the antibiotics prior to undergoing invasive dental treatment if they are at risk for some type of complication related to infective endocarditis. Things that would fit into that category include patients with abnormal heart valve function and specific heart defects.
Before these regulations were changed, many more people were the recipients of these antibiotics. The antibiotics were also administered for a wider array of procedures.
A study was conducted from the beginning of 1999 through the end of 2010. The Olmsted County, Minn. patients comprised about two to three of every 100,000 people in the United States that were diagnosed with heart infection before the new guidelines and one of every 100,000 after the new guidelines.
The amount of national infective endocarditis cases diagnosed was negligibly different before and after (15,300 to 17,400 cases diagnosed from 1999 through 2006 and 14,700 to 15,500 cases diagnosed after the new guidelines).
More research is necessary to verify this information.
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