Impact of Preoperative Dental Screening in Reducing Infective Endocarditis Risk in Surgical Valve Replacement Patients

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.

Infective endocarditis (IE), a condition linked with significant mortality and morbidity rates, is particularly concerning for patients with prosthetic left-sided valves. These patients face an elevated IE risk, estimated at about 1% annually in tertiary care settings, cumulatively impacting around one in every 20 patients over a decade. In line with this, both the American Heart Association (AHA) and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) strongly advocate for the elimination of potential dental sepsis sources at least two weeks before prosthetic valve implantation, except in urgent cases. These guidelines, while not grounded in randomized trials, largely draw upon registry data detailing IE incidence among surgical valve replacement patients. In a recent study the investigators found no difference in risk of IE when comparing mandatory preoperative dental screening (MPDS) with no preoperative dental screening (NPDS). Thus, this prospective registry-based observational before-and-after study aims to investigate the impact of different preoperative dental screening practices on the risk of IE in patients undergoing.