Infective endocarditis in patients with liver cirrhosis. Is surgery indicated?

Introduction and objectives: Liver cirrhosis worsens the prognosis of patients with infective endocarditis (IE), and the indication of surgery in this group of patients remains controversial. The aim of this study was to analyse the mortality of patients with liver cirrhosis and IE. Methods: The study included all the patients diagnosed with IE in our Hospital, from 1 January 1985 to 15 June 2015. A descriptive analysis was performed on the whole cohort of patients, as well as on the subgroup that also had liver cirrhosis. Results: A total of 996 patients were diagnosed with IE, 54 (5.42%) of whom also had liver cirrhosis. Of these, 29 (44.4%) patients were in stage A on the Child-Pugh scale, 19 (35.2%) patients were in stage B, and (20.37%) 11 patients were in stage C. The incidence of major complications in cirrhotic patients was 77.1%. The overall mortality was 37%. Postoperative mortality significantly increased from 20% in stage A, to 83% in stage C of Child-Pugh scale. Conclusions: Hepatic cirrhosis worsens the prognosis of IE, increasing postoperative mortality from 19.2% to 37%. Moreover, it is associated with a very high rate of major complications (77.1%). The mortality of stage A cirrhotic patients assigned to surgery was lower than the mortality of patients assigned to medical treatment. The high mortality rate in advanced stages of cirrhosis suggests that a more individualized surgical indication needs to be established, as well as a more careful post-operative management. (C) 2016 Sociedad Espanola de Cirugia Torkica-Cardiovascular. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).