Prevention of infective endocarditis in dental practice: past, present, and future perspectives

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of Infective endocarditis, the life threatening risk situation in our clinical practice. Our profession has witnessed a great evolution of variable prophylactic antibiotic regimens. The lack of evidence based clinical recommendations for IE prophylaxis has always been in question among professionals. It is interesting to know that in past one decade, there is a major change in this area. Recently the British recommendations have stirred the thought process. The American Heart Associations [AHA] recommendations are World widely accepted. Recently Australian multidisciplinary group has issued supportive/explanatory recommendations in line with the American Heart Association's recommendations The professionals are free to choose any of those, but the ATM are more cautions in protecting professionals and giving comfort level to patients rather than departure from the antibiotic prophylactic regimens. The review paper has covered briefly, the history of Infective endocarditis, past antibiotic regimens, present recommendations and future perspectives Within the limitations of this review, it is hoped that vigilant dental professionals would keep themselves abreast with the updated contemporary guidelines for the safety, quality of life and care of their patients