Early surgery for heart infections may reduce serious complications

American Heart Association Late-Breaking Clinical Trial Report - Abstract: 18470 - EMBARGOED UNTIL 8AM ET November 16, 2011 Study Highlights:Early surgery for infective endocarditis eliminated some complications and repeat infections.Early surgery along with antibiotics is a viable alternative to standard treatment, which includes surgery only for patients who develop life-threatening complications or don’t respond to antibiotics. ORLANDO, FLA., Nov. 16, 2011 — Surgery soon after diagnosis of a heart infection eliminated the incidence of strokes and repeat infections, researchers said in a late-breaking presentation at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2011. Infective endocarditis — infection of tissues lining the heart, including the valves — is uncommon but serious. It affects about 29,000 people in the United States each year.Researchers report the first randomized study comparing standard treatment (antibiotics, with surgery only for severe cases) to antibiotics plus surgery soon after diagnosis.A main cause of infective endocarditis is bacteria that enter the bloodstream and lodge in the heart tissue in patients with a pre-existing heart condition. Complications include stroke, infections in other parts of the body or heart failure. The condition is often fatal if left untreated, and effective antibiotic treatment is critical. Early surgery is generally reserved for patients in whom medicines didn’t treat the problem completely or who have other complications. “We found that early surgery — within 48 hours of diagnosis of infective endocarditis — is clinically feasible,” said Duk-Hyun Kang, M.D, Ph.D., study author and professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Asian Medical Center and the College of Medicine, University of Ulsan in Seoul, Korea. “It can be an option to further improve clinical outcome in infective endocarditis, which is associated with considerable mortality and morbidity that has not improved significantly despite advances in medical and surgical treatment.” In the new study, researchers randomly assigned 76 patients to receive either surgery to remove infected tissue and repair damage within 48 hours of diagnosis or standard treatment, which includes antibiotics and surgery only in severe cases unresponsive to antibiotics or in those with other life-threatening complications.  The participants were diagnosed with infective endocarditis and severe valve disease at two centers in Seoul between September 2006 and September 2011. Sixty-nine percent of the participants were male and average age was 48 years.  Among the patients, 77 percent in the standard therapy group had urgent or elective surgery an average of fifteen days after diagnosis. Early-surgery patients underwent surgical repair one day after diagnosis. Researchers, analyzing the data on rate of death and arterial obstruction due to emboli by six weeks after surgery, found that:Patients who underwent early surgery had no vascular obstruction, while five strokes and three arterial obstructions occurred among those on standard treatment.The in-hospital death rate in the two groups was the same at 3 percent.Six months after treatment, none of the early-surgery patients had developed stroke or another infection. In contrast, 23 percent of those who received standard therapy developed complications (eight embolic events