Clinical aspects of infective endocarditis - A report of 5 cases in a department of Internal Medicine
Keywords:
infective endocarditis, diagnosis, echocardiography, transesophageal echocardiographyAbstract
Infective endocarditis is a potentially life threatening disease. It is an infection of the endocardium and the heart valves (specially abnormal and susceptible cardiac structures), most often resulting from bacteremia. Infective endocarditis has a broad clinical picture, with systemic and multiorgan impairment. Major complaints are fever and others systemic symptoms such as night sweats, loss of appetite, weight loss, embolic manifestations (hematuria, backache, petechiae, splinter hemorrhages, Osler 's nodes, Janeway lesions or Central Nervous System embolization) and a cardiac murmur. Definite diagnosis is often delayed due to this non specific manifestations. The índex of suspicion of Infective Endocarditis, therefore, must be high in order to prevent potentially fatal complications.
The authors report five cases of infective endocarditis admitted to our Internal Medicine Department with fever of unknown origin, stressing the importance of Echocardiography, specially Transesophageal Echocardiography, for definite diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic strategy.
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