Should People with Heart Valve Problems Take Antibiotics Before Invasive Dental Procedures?
People with heart valve problems are told to take antibiotics before certain dental procedures in order to prevent bacterial endocarditis. This disease can be triggered by bacteria disrupted by tooth scaling, dental implantation, and other invasive procedures. The bacteria goes into the bloodstream and become lodged in the innermost layers of the damaged heart valves. It is potentially fatal and can be well underway before symptoms ever appear. To treat after the fact might very well be too late. But antibiotic therapy in itself can cause harm. And some researchers have questioned the universal preventive antibiotics recommendation because bacterial endocarditis is an uncommon disease. For a 2004 Cochrane* review entitled, “Penicillins for the prophylaxis of bacterial endocarditis in dentistry,” R. Oliver and colleagues searched the published medical literature to find studies that proved the benefits of preventive antibiotics outweigh the harm for high-risk people facing an invasive d
