Endocarditis

The burden of endocarditis has changed in the last years due to an increase in percutaneous valve procedures offered to a more fragile, and old population. Therefore an update in epidemiology data is necessary. The Observational prospective multicenter study to characterize the cLinical ANd DiagnoStiC feAtures of endocarditis in the contemPorary Era, (ENDO-LANDSCAPE study) is an observational, multicenter and international study. The study has two arms: retrospective and prospective. The retrospective arm will involve collecting data from patients discharged with a diagnosis of endocarditis between 2016 and 2022. The data obtained in the retrospective arm of the study will be utilized in a power calculation to determine the sample size for the prospective arm of the study. In the prospective phase in every participating center, all patients referred for echocardiography to assess for endocarditis and those with established endocarditis independent of the screened request will be eligible. Patients will then be stratified according to the presence or abscence of endocarditis. Those with an established diagnosis of endocarditis will be prospectively followed for outcomes.

The objective of this study is to determine if early parametric positron emission computed tomography is useful to diagnose cardiac prosthetic valve infections.

In Odense University Hospital preoperative dental screening (PDS) protocol for patients treated with surgical valve replacement was changed from mandatory to targeted PDS to from march 2024. The investigators will therefore compare the risk of IE before vs after march 2024.

The Barts Endocarditis Research Registry is being set up to give a unique opportunity to assess the characteristics of Infective Endocarditis (IE) in our population cohort, the current use of imaging techniques, as well as the implementation of the ESC guidelines and its consequence in terms of prognosis. All this will help improve the diagnosis and management of IE. The registry will also form the core of all our subsequent work, including interventional studies. The endocarditis research registry is to record the epidemiological, demographic, microbiological, surgical and outcome data in our cohort of endocarditis patients. This work will underpin all future work in endocarditis by clearly defining our patient cohort and the outcomes from treatment. We have a series of studies planned that we believe will influence the management of endocarditis (we are working up proposals for genomic and therapeutic trials that will subsequently be presented for ethical and hospital approval). The registry will be generic to all our planned studies, and will allow us to capture data to assess treatment effectiveness

Infectious endocarditis (IE) and other severe infections are well-known to induce significant changes in the immune response including immune functionality in a considerable number of affected patients. In fact, numerous patients with IE develop a persistent functional immunological phenotype that can best be characterized by a profound anti-inflammation and/or functional anergy. This was previously referred to as "injury-associated immunosuppression (IAI)" by Pfortmüller et al., published in Intensive Care Medicine Experimental 2017. IAI can be assessed by measurement of cellular (functional) markers. Persistence of IAI is associated with prolonged ICU length of stay, increased secondary infection rates, and death. Immunomodulation to reverse IAI was shown beneficial in immunostimulatory (randomized controlled) clinical trials. CytoSorb® treatment is currently used as standard of care in some institutions in surgically treated IE patients. The investigators aim to investigate two accepted treatment protocols and aim to explore whether adsorption with a cytokine adsorption filter can increase immune competence in treated individuals.

Although controversy exists regarding the efficacy of antibiotic prophylaxis for patients at risk of infective endocarditis, expert committees continue to publish recommendations for antibiotic prophylactic regimens. The last American Heart Association (AHA) and European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines include several important changes, highlighting that clindamycin (CLI) is no longer recommended as an alternative to amoxicillin in those allergic to penicillin. This new project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of oral doxycycline in preventing post-dental extraction bloodstream infection.

Existing guidelines recommend a duration of antibiotic treatment of endocarditis of 4-6 weeks one or more types of intravenously administered antibiotics. The long hospitalization increases several risks for the patient, including mental strain and increased loss of function. Furthermore, it poses a significant financial burden on the health systems. Current guidelines fail to use available clinical and paraclinical, data collected from patients (echo, temperature, CRP, leukocytes, procalcitonin etc.) to determine duration of treatment. A strategy including these data in treatment algorithms ensures an individualized treatment, targeting the individual patient's course and response to treatment. Thus, the purpose of this open-label, prospective, non-inferiority, RCT study is to investigate the safety and effectiveness of shortening treatment of endocarditis based on the individual patient's initial treatment response, sampling 475 patients, approx. 125 patients with each type of bacteria (Streptococci; Enterococcus faecalis; Staphylococcus aureus).

The investigators will compare patients with and without infective ndocarditis undergoing valve surgery and evaluate factors that may help optimise perioperative care of these high-risk patients.

Infective endocarditis (IE) continues to cause serious morbidity and mortality. To reduce its incidence, antibiotic prophylaxis has been recommended before invasive dental procedures in patients with at risk predispositions. Several studies have examined the effect of antibiotic prophylaxis on the incidence of IE and have brought conflicting results. The investigators aim to evaluate the effectiveness of antibiotic prophylaxis before invasive dental procedures to prevent oral streptococcal infective endocarditis in patients with prosthetic heart valves and/or history of IE, using a registry-based, cluster-randomized, controlled trial. In secondary objectives, the investigators aim to analyze changes in dentists' practices.