Contemporary risk models, including general cardiac and endocarditis-specific scores, play a crucial role in assessing procedural risk and institutional performance in infective endocarditis surgery.
What are the clinical characteristics and applications of contemporary risk scores in the surgical treatment of infective endocarditis?
This narrative review highlights the development and application of endocarditis-specific and general cardiac surgery risk models to improve perioperative decision-making and institutional performance assessment in infective endocarditis surgery.
Infective endocarditis is a complex heterogeneous condition involving the infection of the endocardium and heart valves, leading to severe complications, including death. Surgery is often indicated in patients with infective endocarditis but is associated with elevated risk compared with other forms of cardiac surgery. Risk models play an important role in many cardiac surgeries as they can help inform clinicians and patients regarding procedural risk, decision-making to proceed or not, and influence perioperative management; however, they remain under-utilized in the infective endocarditis settings. Another crucial role of such risk models is to assess predicted versus found mortality, thereby allowing an assessment of institutional performance in infective endocarditis surgery. Traditionally, general cardiac surgery risk models such as European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE), EuroSCORE II, and Society of Thoracic Surgeon’s score have been applied to endocarditis surgery. However, there has been the development of many endocarditis surgery-specific scores over the last decade. This review aims to discuss clinical characteristics and applications of all contemporary risk scores in the setting of surgical treatment of infective endocarditis.
Agrawal et al. (Sun,) conducted a review in Infective endocarditis. Risk models for infective endocarditis surgery was evaluated. Contemporary risk models, including general cardiac and endocarditis-specific scores, play a crucial role in assessing procedural risk and institutional performance in infective endocarditis surgery.