In a paper presented today at an international medical conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., Dr. B. Martin Eicke of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, reported that 80 percent of the patients he studied continued to have microembolisms in their brains up to four weeks after having been treated with antibiotics. Microembolisms are small particles in the blood. In the brain they can induce brain abscesses and lesions that can lead to stroke. In the case of endocarditis the microembolisms result from bacteria growing on the lining of the heart and its valves.
Standard practice is treatment with antibiotics.
The new research suggests that antibiotics alone are not sufficient because microembolisms continue to form, Eicke said. So these patients should be followed very carefully. The disease killed 2,048 Americans in 1993, according to the American Heart Association. About 22,000 Americans suffered from the disease in 1994, the latest year for which statistics are available. Additional research is needed to determine what additional treatment would reduce the risk of stroke in these patients, Eicke said.