Dear Abby:
I am a certified operating-room nurse. Our surgeons have recently seen patients in their teens and twenties needing open heart surgery to replace a diseased valve.
Please warn your readers that tongue studs can lead to endocarditis, requiring surgery to replace damaged heart valves, as well as other health problems. Not only do these otherwise healthy young people have to endure this major surgery, but they also face having to take blood thinners for the rest of their lives or having their prosthetic valve replaced every 15 to 20 years.
We will see this documented in medical journals in a few years as the incidence rises, but we can save lives and prevent illness NOW by urging people to remove their tongue jewelry and let their tongues heal. The hole in the tongue provides a pathway for natural organisms in the mouth to find their way to the heart and the rest of the body with devastating results. Wearing tongue jewelry can endanger their health, their future, their very lives.
Karen Murphy, R.N., Morton Plant Hospital, Fla.
Your letter raised eyebrows in my office, including my own, so I called the American Heart Association for more information. They referred me to Gerald Pohost, M.D., at the University of Southern California, who kindly shared the following with me: He agrees that for certain individuals, people with a medical history of rheumatic fever or rheumatic valve disease -- or ANY heart valve disease -- tongue jewelry could, indeed, be dangerous.
I hope my readers will pay attention to these two concerned health-care professionals. At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, it's better to be safe than sorry.
I am a certified operating-room nurse. Our surgeons have recently seen patients in their teens and twenties needing open heart surgery to replace a diseased valve.
Please warn your readers that tongue studs can lead to endocarditis, requiring surgery to replace damaged heart valves, as well as other health problems. Not only do these otherwise healthy young people have to endure this major surgery, but they also face having to take blood thinners for the rest of their lives or having their prosthetic valve replaced every 15 to 20 years.
We will see this documented in medical journals in a few years as the incidence rises, but we can save lives and prevent illness NOW by urging people to remove their tongue jewelry and let their tongues heal. The hole in the tongue provides a pathway for natural organisms in the mouth to find their way to the heart and the rest of the body with devastating results. Wearing tongue jewelry can endanger their health, their future, their very lives.
Karen Murphy, R.N., Morton Plant Hospital, Fla.
Your letter raised eyebrows in my office, including my own, so I called the American Heart Association for more information. They referred me to Gerald Pohost, M.D., at the University of Southern California, who kindly shared the following with me: He agrees that for certain individuals, people with a medical history of rheumatic fever or rheumatic valve disease -- or ANY heart valve disease -- tongue jewelry could, indeed, be dangerous.
I hope my readers will pay attention to these two concerned health-care professionals. At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, it's better to be safe than sorry.
