Editor's Commentary

Treatment Outcomes for Right-Sided Endocarditis in Intravenous Drug Users: A Systematic Review and Analysis of Outcomes in a Tertiary Centre

Infective endocarditis of the right side of the heart has been troubling cardiologists and cardiac surgeons for decades. In this review, Shah and coworkers undertook the challenging task to analyze the literature which compares medical with surgical treatment. Not surprisingly, no clear-cut recommendations or algorithms were found. One may argue that this nonresult would be a reason for rejecting the manuscript—a decision which was, in fact, recommended by one of the reviewers.

Faithful readers of the ThCVS, however, will be aware that this subject was the focus of a paper with invited discussants in 2016[1] with a subsequent discussion published in 2017.[2] The count of readers' reactions to this provocative original article did not quite fulfill the editor's and authors' expectations. Therefore, Shah's analysis immediately caught the eye and the decision to publish it was based on two factors: (1) Negative or equivocal results are still results. (2) The subject is important and will continue to be so.

• References

• 1 Gansera LS, Eszlari E, Deutsch O, Eichinger WB, Gansera B. High-risk cardiac surgery in patients with intravenous drug abuse and/or active hepatitis C/HIV infection. An ethical discussion of 6 cases. Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2016; 64 (01) 2-5
• 2 Gansera B, Eichinger WB, Gansera LS. From surgical responsibility to abstract ideology. Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2017; 65 (01) 5-8