Omran SS, et al. - Identifying hospitalizations via the 1993 to 2015 releases of the National Inpatient Sample and the validated Ninth Revision of International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification codes (ICD-9-CM), researchers tested the premise that increased opioid abuse has resulted in a higher incidence of stroke associated with infective endocarditis (IE) and opioid use. There were 5,283 hospitalizations with stroke associated with IE and opioid use from 1993 through 2015. The rate of such hospitalizations rose over this period from 2.4 to 18.8 per 10 million US residents. Overall, the investigators observed that US stroke hospitalization rates linked with IE and opioid use were stable for about two decades, but increased sharply from 2008 on, overlapping with the start of the opioid epidemic.