Should Patients With Opioid Addiction Have a Second Valve Replacement for Endocarditis?

The enormous increase in drug addiction that began about 25 years ago could be described as a crisis or as an epidemic, but under either label, the problem is immense and resistant to corrective interventions. In 2018, opioid misuse affected 10.3 million Americans, and about one-fifth of those (2.1 million) were diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD).1 The most important subgroup of patients with OUD were those who died of opioid overdose:...