Purpose: The purpose of this retrospective as well as prospective case-control study was to analyze a possible overrepresentation of inflammatory bowel diseases among patients with native valve endocarditis as well as the factors that predispose patients with inflammatory bowel disease to infective endocarditis.
Patients and methods: Among 213 consecutive patients treated for proven native valve endocarditis, six (2.8%) had inflammatory bowel diseases (three with ulcerative colitis and three with Crohn's disease). Three patients with inflammatory bowel disease were from the retrospective group, and three were from the prospective group. The prevalence of inflammatory bowel diseases has been determined to be 0.0641% in the Düsseldorf area.
Results: On the basis of these data, a 44-fold overrepresentation of inflammatory bowel diseases among the 213 patients with endocarditis was calculated with a statistical significance of p much less than 0.001.
Conclusions: Inflammatory bowel disease may be considered an independent risk factor for bacterial endocarditis. Reasons may be more frequent bacteremias as a result of the higher incidence of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, as well as increased permeability of the damaged mucosa for bacteria and the therapeutic immunosuppression in patients with active inflammatory bowel disease. Prophylaxis for bacterial endocarditis should be carefully considered before expected bacteremias in patients with highly active inflammatory bowel disease even in the absence of cardiac factors predisposing to bacterial endocarditis.