Etiology, Risk Factors and Outcome of 1003 Cases of Infective Endocarditis from a 33-year National Survey in the Slovak Republic: An increasing proportion of elderly patients.

Background: Infective endocarditis (IE) is still a significant cause of mortality in European hospitals, despite of the fact, that large nationwide studies were performed in last twenty years and pathogens are well known. The aim of the study was to assess risk factors, mortality, etiology and proportion of elderly patients within a longitudinal nation wide survey of infectious endocarditis in Slovakia.

Patients And Methods: Etiology, risk factors and outcome of 1003 cases of infective endocarditis (IE) in Slovakia over the last 33 years have been assessed.

Transferable fluoroquinolone resistance in Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from hemocultures.

Background: The main mechanisms causing high-level resistance to fluoroquinolones (FQ) are encoded chromosomally; that includes mutations in genes coding DNA-gyrase, but overexpression of efflux pumps contributes to increased minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of FQ as well. However, genes responsible for FQ-resistance may be harboured in transferable/conjugative plasmids. For some time, there was an assumption that resistance to FQ cannot be transferable in conjugation due to their synthetic origin, until 1998, when plasmid-mediated resistance transmission in Klebsiella pneumoniae was proved.