“I Just Need Proper Treatment”: Being Hospitalized for Endocarditis among Individuals Who Inject Drugs Being Hospitalized for Endocarditis

Healthcare professionals are crucial in the identification and accessibility to treatment for people with substance use disorders. Our objective was to assess health professionals' attitudes towards patients with substance use disorders and examine the consequences of these attitudes on healthcare delivery for these patients in Western countries. Pubmed, PsycINFO and Embase were systematically searched for articles published between 2000 and 2011. Studies evaluating health professionals' attitudes towards patients with substance use disorders and consequences of negative attitudes were included. An inclusion criterion was that studies addressed alcohol or illicit drug abuse. Reviews, commentaries and letters were excluded, as were studies originating from non-Western countries. The search process yielded 1562 citations. After selection and quality assessment, 28 studies were included. Health professionals generally had a negative attitude towards patients with substance use disorders. They perceived violence, manipulation, and poor motivation as impeding factors in the healthcare delivery for these patients. Health professionals also lacked adequate education, training and support structures in working with this patient group. Negative attitudes of health professionals diminished patients' feelings of empowerment and subsequent treatment outcomes. Health professionals are less involved and have a more task-oriented approach in the delivery of healthcare, resulting in less personal engagement and diminished empathy. This review indicates that negative attitudes of health professionals towards patients with substance use disorders are common and contribute to suboptimal health care for these patients. However, few studies have evaluated the consequences of health professionals' negative attitudes towards patients with substance use disorders. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

People who inject drugs (PWID) are at risk for infective endocarditis (IE). Hospitalization rates related to misuse of prescription opioids and heroin have increased in recent years, but there are no recent investigations into rates of hospitalizations from injection drug use-related IE (IDU-IE). Using the Health Care and Utilization Project National Inpatient Sample (HCUP-NIS) dataset, we found that the proportion of IE hospitalizations from IDU-IE increased from 7% to 12.1% between 2000 and 2013. Over this time period, we detected a significant increase in the percentages of IDU-IE hospitalizations among 15- to 34-year-olds (27.1%–42.0%; P < .001) and among whites (40.2%–68.9%; P < .001). Female gender was less common when examining all the IDU-IE (40.9%), but it was more common in the 15- to 34-year-old age group (53%). Our findings suggest that the demographics of inpatients hospitalized with IDU-IE are shifting to reflect younger PWID who are more likely to be white and female than previously reported. Future studies to investigate risk behaviors associated with IDU-IE and targeted harm reduction strategies are needed to avoid further increases in morbidity and mortality in this rapidly growing population of young PWID.

Serious infection is a recognized complication of intravenous drug abuse and a major cause of morbidity and mortality among intravenous drug users. Trends in rates of serious infection and the associated costs related to opioid abuse/dependence have not been previously investigated in the context of the US opioid use epidemic. Our study, using a nationally representative sample of US inpatient hospitalizations, showed that hospitalizations related to opioid abuse/dependence both with and without associated serious infection significantly increased from 2002 to 2012, respectively, from 301,707 to 520,275 and from 3,421 to 6,535. Additionally, inpatient charges for both types of hospitalizations almost quadrupled over the same time period, reaching almost $15 billion for hospitalizations related to opioid abuse/dependence and more than $700 million for those related to associated infection in 2012. Medicaid was the most common primary payer for both types of hospitalizations. Our results characterize the financial burden on the health care system related to opioid abuse/dependence and one of the more serious downstream complications of this epidemic: serious infection. These findings have important implications for the hospitals and government agencies that disproportionately shoulder these costs and for clinicians, researchers, and policy makers interested in estimating the potential impact of targeted public health interventions on a national level.