The changing landscape of infective endocarditis in South Africa.

CONCLUSIONS: IE remains an important clinical problem in a typical teaching tertiary care centre in SA. In this setting, it continues to affect mainly young people with post-inflammatory valve disease and congenital heart disease. The in-hospital mortality associated with IE remains high. Intravenous drug-associated endocarditis caused by S. aureus is an important IE subset, comprising ~10% of all cases, which was not reported 15 years ago, and culture-negative endocarditis remains highly prevalent. Heart failure in IE carries a significant risk of death and needs a more intensive level of care in hospital. Finally, cardiac surgery was associated with reduced mortality, with the largest impact in patients with heart failure. PMID: 31456555 [PubMed - in process]
Source: South African Medical Journal - Category: African Health Tags: S Afr Med J Source Type: research