Author/Authors :
Croft، نويسنده , , Lori B and Donnino، نويسنده , , Robert and Shapiro، نويسنده , , Robert and Indes، نويسنده , , Jodi and Fayngersh، نويسنده , , Alla and Squire، نويسنده , , Anthony and Goldman، نويسنده , , Martin E، نويسنده ,
Abstract :
The goal of our study was to determine the prevalence of older patients with cardiac valvular abnormalities warranting endocarditis prophylaxis. We performed a retrospective analysis of 1,000 randomly selected echocardiograms (inpatients and outpatients) from our tertiary care institution. We found that the prevalence of valvular abnormalities increased significantly with age, and that 50% of patients ≥60 years of age warranted endocarditis prophylaxis using current guidelines. With the aging population of the United States and the negative consequences of widespread antibiotic prophylaxis, further investigation is needed to identify patients who are truly at risk for infectious endocarditis.
