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The following is a summary of “Outcomes of infective endocarditis in patients with end-stage renal disease in Spain: a population-based study,” published in the April 2025 issue of BMC Infectious Diseases by Gómez-Ramírez et al. 

Individuals with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) were known to have an elevated risk of developing infective endocarditis (IE) and experienced poorer outcomes associated with the condition.  

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to examine the clinical characteristics and outcomes of individuals with IE and ESRD in Spain, comparing those receiving dialysis with others who were not.  

They analyzed 9,008 episodes of IE from 2016 to 2019 using the Spanish Minimum Basic Data Set (SMBD), identifying 428 individuals with ESRD, including 332 receiving dialysis and applied multivariable with multilevel logistic regression models to assess factors associated with in-hospital mortality in the ESRD group.  

The results showed that individuals with ESRD were younger, had more comorbidities, and had a higher prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus (31.8% vs 18.4%; P < 0.001) and coagulase-negative staphylococci infections (19.2% vs 14%; P = 0.006) compared to those without ESRD. Septic shock occurred more often in the ESRD group (12.1% vs 8.9%; P = 0.007), while cardiac surgery was performed less frequently (12.6% vs 19.6%; P < 0.001). In-hospital mortality was higher in individuals with ESRD (33.4% vs 26.9%; P = 0.003). Among individuals with ESRD, dialysis recipients had more comorbidities and higher rates of S. aureus infection (36.1% vs 16.7%; P < 0.001). Dialysis and cardiac surgery were not independently linked to in-hospital mortality in multilevel analysis.  

Investigators concluded that patients with ESRD and IE presented with unique clinical and microbiological features had higher in-hospital mortality and were less likely to undergo cardiac surgery, with neither dialysis nor surgery being independent mortality risk factors. 

Source: bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-025-10978-4