Dental Reduction in Antibiotic Use Does Not Increase Endocarditis

Infective endocarditis, a rare but life-threatening disease caused by bacterial infection of the heart valves, affects about 500 people in Sweden each year

In Sweden, people at higher risk for infective endocarditis used to receive the antibiotic amoxicillin as a preventive medication before certain dental procedures such as tooth extractions, scaling and surgery

Support for proposed changes

Niko V?h?sarja, corresponding author of the study, said: "We can only see small, statistically insignificant changes in incidence, with no indication that the infection has risen in risk groups since 2012.

The registry study covered 76,762 high-risk and 396,048 low-risk infective endocarditis individuals from 2008 to 2018 with the help of the Medical Birth Registry, the National Patient Registry and the Swedish Endocarditis Registry They were monitored

The recommendation was supplemented in 2016 with a directive that prophylactic antibiotic therapy should be considered if prescribed by a patient's doctor

Reduce amoxicillin prescriptions

After the recommendations were revised in 2012, dental prescriptions for amoxicillin were reduced by about 40 percent

"The next step is to examine which dental procedures were performed in high-risk groups between 2008-2018, as this is the information we lack and it could increase our understanding of a hitherto under-studied issue," said Mr V?h?sarja

The study was funded by the Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish public health agency, Folktandvörden Stockholm AB, the Karolinska Institute, the City of Stockholm and the Swedish Dental Association Dental Research Steering Committee

Journal Reference :

1. Niko Vähäsarja, Bodil Lund, Anders Ternhag, Bengt Götrick, Lars Olaison, Margareta Hultin, Anna Warnqvist, Carina Krüger Weiner, Aron Naimi-Akbar.