LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The opioid crisis is destroying lives in new ways.

“This is an infection that involves the valves of the heart. It primarily occurs in the valves, although it can affect other parts of the heart,” Dr. Sami El Darati said of endocarditis. .

Dr. El Dalati, Director of the Endocarditis Program at Chandler Hospital, UK, and a team of UK researchers meet frequently to discuss how to care for patients with endocarditis. Their efforts over two and a half years have reduced Kentucky’s mortality rate from 17.5 percent to 9.9 percent. When El Dalati started doing this kind of research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he said the mortality rate had dropped from 30% to 7%. His team also believes that opioid addiction is a major cause of endocarditis.

They studied the disease from 2009 to 2018 and found that opioid addiction was increasing significantly as it reached crisis levels.

“We were seeing about 40 cases a year,” he said of the 2009 study, before opioid use began to skyrocket. “It was about 250 cases a year,” he said of the nine-year increase in cases.

Joshua Gilvin is one of the more recent cases. He was in a serious car accident in his 2001 and required painkillers until he recovered. However, he developed an addiction to them. His symptoms got so bad that he was leaving the state to have his prescriptions filled elsewhere. When he ran out of them, he turned to heroin.

“I was on the brink of death many times,” Gilvin said from his home less than two months after surgery to partially repair endocarditis with a mechanical valve.

Gilvin was detained and imprisoned for a time, and his family wanted nothing to do with him, often making him absent from holiday gatherings. But the most significant blow, the one that caused the kind of pain that opioids can’t, came from his daughter.

“She wants to change her last name,” a family friend told her about her daughter’s decision. “That really stuck with me. That was the biggest thing. I decided then that that was it, I had to make something of myself,” Gilvin recalled.

For that, he needed to get clean. Probation officers are testing him to make sure he hasn’t taken drugs. But he also had to commit to living his life with strong desires but with a promise to himself not to fulfill them.

“After all the effort people have put into me and all the effort I’ve put into myself, it’s a shame to be a 165-pound junkie on a street corner in Mount Sterling again,” he said. Told.

Over time, Gilvin’s teeth rotted due to the effects of the medication, and new teeth began to grow. Now he has a new heart too. It was something that could sustain him for quite some time.

“In his case, we put in a mechanical heart valve, which can last 30 to 40 years,” Dr. El Dalati said. “If we keep up with him and keep him on medical care, he should live the lifespan of that valve,” he continued.