Prosthetic valve endocarditis.

Prosthetic valve endocarditis (PVE) is associated with a high mortality during the early and midterm follow-up despite diagnostic and therapeutic improvements; its incidence is increasing and reaches 20-30% of all infective endocarditis episodes. In this review, changes in epidemiology, microbiology, diagnosis and therapy that have evolved in the past few years are analyzed. Staphylococci (both Staphylococcus aureus and coagulase-negative Staphylococcus) have emerged as the most common cause of PVE and are associated with a severe prognosis.

Complications of infective endocarditis.

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a lethal disease if not promptly treated with antibiotics, either in association with surgery or not. The incidence of disease has not decreased over the last decades due to the change of risk conditions. Complications of IE may involve cardiac structures when the infection spreads within the heart, or extra cardiac ones when the cause is usually from embolic origin; they may also be due to medical treatment or to the septic condition itself.

Infective endocarditis: outcome in surviving patients with intracardiac complications.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the outcome of 15 patients who survived infective endocarditis with abscesses and other intracardiac complications.

Methods: Abscesses were associated with native valve endocarditis in seven patients and prosthetic valve endocarditis in eight patients; fistulas were observed in three patients, and subaortic perforation in three patients. Sensitivity for the detection of abscesses was 42.

Ebstein's anomaly and pregnancy: a case report.

Ebstein's anomaly, an uncommon malformation of the tricuspid valve, has an extremely variable natural history, depending on a wide spectrum of pathological features. We here described a case of a patient with Ebstein's anomaly who gave birth to 2 healthy unaffected full-term infants after two successful pregnancies; a third pregnancy miscarried at the 11th week. The anomaly was diagnosed during childhood, was not associated with other cardiac anomalies, cyanosis or preexcitation and the echocardiographic degree of severity was low (grade 1).