People with an infected or abscessed tooth are at elevated risk for cardiovascular disease. They are at particular risk for developing a serious infection during surgery, including endocarditis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the heart. Because of this risk, in order to reduce the chance of infection, many patients undergo dental extraction prior to having a planned cardiac surgery. Now, however, a new paper published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery raises the possibility that prophylactic dental extraction may be far more risky than previously thought.
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