Tag Archives: endocarditis

Introduction The tricuspid valve (TV) is involved in 90% of patients with right-sided endocarditis and is most common in people with intravenous drug use (IVDU). Septic pulmonary emboli occur in >50% of patients with TV involvement and manifests with various respiratory symptoms.1 Case report A 38-year-old man presented with a prodrome of flu-like illness along with night sweats, pleuritic chest pain and cough for two weeks unresponsive to the usual first- and second-line oral antibiotics (amoxicillin 1 g 8 hourly for five days, and doxycycline 100 mg 12 hourly for five days, respectively). There was no history of illicit IVDU or any condi

Introduction The incidence of Cutibacterium acnes as the causative organism for infective endocarditis (IE) is reported as 0.3%.1 C. acnes IE is associated with both native and prosthetic valves, but is much more commonly found on prosthetic valves. Studies show that middle-aged men are mostly affected, with serious infections increasingly reported in association with bioprosthetic material.1 C. acnes is part of the commensal flora of the skin, colonising pilous follicles and sebaceous glands, and may also be found in the mucosa of the mouth, nose, urogenital tract and large intestine, this difference might account for the gender-specific b

The technology is already used to treat inflammation in critically ill and cardiac surgery patients as an early standalone (I.e. without combined renal replacement) therapy for extracorporeal cytokine removal. It is designed to reduce the ‘cytokine storm’ or ‘cytokine release syndrome’, a major contributing factor in inflammation. The controlled study of 20 patients was conducted by a team at the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Therapy of the University Szeged in Hungary, led by Professor Zsolt Molnar. They investigated the effects of a single treatment of extracorporeal cytokine removal with CytoSorb® therapy, in additio

Introduction Figure 1. Chest X-ray (antero-posterior projection) demonstrating a septic lesion (thick arrow) Despite the significant improvements in both diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in recent years, infective endocarditis (IE) remains a medical challenge due to poor prognosis and high mortality. IE varies according to the initial clinical manifestations, underlying cardiac disease, micro-organisms involved and the associated complications. Echocardiographically, the majority of patients demonstrate vegetations on a single valve, while demonstration of involvement of two valves occurs much less frequently; triple-valve involvement is

Introduction Figure 1. A large vegetation on the aortic valve from a patient with infective endocarditis Untreated infective endocarditis (IE) is fatal; even with appropriate treatment, IE is associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality worldwide.1 The annual incidence of IE over the past two decades has remained relatively constant, ranging between 1.7 and 6.2 cases/100,000 population. Neither advances in healthcare nor revisions made to the current diagnostic criteria have substantially altered this.1-3 The current definition for IE now incorporates infections of prosthetic heart valves (both bioprosthetic and mechanical), implante

No content available

No content available

No content available