Age-related prevalence of cardiac valvular abnormalities warranting infectious endocarditis prophylaxis.

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 > or =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.

[1]  Jagmeet P. Singh,et al.  Prevalence and clinical determinants of mitral, tricuspid, and aortic regurgitation (the Framingham Heart Study) , 1999, The American journal of cardiology.

[2]  D. Durack,et al.  Prevention of Infective Endocarditis , 2007, Pediatrics.

[3]  N. Nanda,et al.  Color Doppler assessment of mitral regurgitation with orthogonal planes. , 1987, Circulation.

[4]  J. Seward,et al.  Age-related prevalence of valvular regurgitation in normal subjects: a comprehensive color flow examination of 118 volunteers. , 1990, Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography : official publication of the American Society of Echocardiography.

[5]  A. Bolger,et al.  Prevention of bacterial endocarditis. , 1983, Medical times.

[6]  N C Nanda,et al.  Evaluation of aortic insufficiency by Doppler color flow mapping. , 1987, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[7]  Taira,et al.  Physicians' recommendations to patients for use of antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent endocarditis , 2000, American journal of ophthalmology.

[8]  H. Rimington,et al.  Echocardiography: A Practical Guide for Reporting , 1998 .

[9]  W. Edwards,et al.  Infective endocarditis. Olmsted County, Minnesota, 1950 through 1981. , 1985, JAMA.

[10]  A. Dajani,et al.  PREVENTION OF BACTERIAL ENDOCARDITIS: RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION , 1991, GMDA bulletin.

[11]  T. Akasaka,et al.  Age-related valvular regurgitation: a study by pulsed Doppler echocardiography. , 1987, Circulation.

[12]  Catherine M. Otto,et al.  Textbook of Clinical Echocardiography , 2004 .