This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

A Statement for Health Professionals by the Committee on Rheumatic Fever and Bacterial Endocarditis of the Council on Cardiovascular Diseases in the Young of the American Heart Association

Stanford T. Shulman, MD; Don P. Amren, MD; Alan L. Bisno, MD; Adnan S. Dajani, MD; David T. Durack, MD, DPhil; Michael A. Gerber, MD; Edward L. Kaplan, MD; H. Dean Millard, DDS, MS; W. Eugene Sanders, MD; Richard H. Schwartz, MD; Chatrchai Watanakunakorn, MD

Am J Dis Child. 1985;139(3):232-235.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Dental treatment, surgical procedures, or instrumentation involving mucosal surfaces or contaminated tissue may cause transient bacteremia. Blood-borne bacteria may lodge on damaged or abnormal heart valves or on endocardium near congenital anatomic defects and result in bacterial endocarditis or endarteritis. However, it is impossible to predict which patients will develop this infection or which procedures will be responsible. Therefore, prophylactic antibiotics are recommended for patients at risk who are undergoing those procedures most likely to cause bacteremia. It is important that such antibiotics be initiated shortly before, not several days before, a procedure. Certain patients, for example, those with prosthetic heart valves and surgically constructed systemic-pulmonary shunts or conduits, are at higher risk of endocarditis than others (Table 1). Likewise, certain dental (eg, extractions) and surgical (eg, genitourinary [GU] tract) procedures are much more likely to initiate significant bacteremia than are others (Table 2). Although the importance of such factors . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Committee on Rheumatic Fever and Bacterial Endocarditis of the Council on Cardiovascular Diseases in the Young, American Heart Association, Dallas.

Footnotes
Correspondence to Department of Pediatrics, The Children's Memorial Hospital, 2300 Children's Plaza, Chicago, IL 60614 (Dr Shulman).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?