Endocarditis Patients: A Case Study

My central claim was performing heart valve surgery on opioid addicts is not a good investment. This specific heart valve surgery is for treating endocarditis patients. I think that a possible solution to my claim would be that hospital could implement a drug treatment program that if mandatory for all endocarditis patients who need the surgery. The surgery is necessary for patients who have tried the medications, and they did not work. Without the surgery, endocarditis could be fatal. Doctors realize that not everyone getting this surgery is a drug addict and that endocarditis can be caused by a multitude of things, but they also know that you can not rule out someone being a drug user just based off of their physical appearance. Because of this, I think it would be safer to conduct a treatment program that all patients who get the surgery must attend. If doctors based strictly off the appearance to decide whether or not someone should attend the drug treatment program after the surgery, some people people could be overlooked and slip through the cracks. By implementing this program, I believe that it …show more content…
He was aware many of the avid drug using endocarditis patients relapse and need the surgery again or sometimes they pass away because of their drug use but he was not sure of the severity. He started by looking online and checking the obituaries to see if the names of any of his patients would arise, and they did. After further investigation, he had learned that 25% of his patients who were intravenous drug users had passed away after leaving the hospital and that they had returned to their old habits. The patients being intravenous drug users is an important distinction to be made because the way that many avid drug users get endocarditis is because they use dirty or contaminated