Infective Endocarditis: Systematic Review

Abstract

Infective endocarditis is an infectious disease that is severe and uncommon, it affects the damaged endocardium in patients with bacteremia or fungemia, therefore bacteria colonize the thrombus that is forming and they start to be covered up by detritus, fibrine, and platelets, among others, this is the reason why the immunological humoral response does not detect it at early stages, there are also predisponent risks factors which allow microorganism growth on the endocardium surface. A systematic review was made from 44 papers after an initial selection of 66 research using searchers such as Pubmed, Medscape, Scielo, and Google Scholar, associated with “Infective Endocarditis”. Gram-positive bacteria were the most frequent etiological causes of infective endocarditis, and its diagnosis is based on modified Duke criteria. The imaging diagnosis gold standard is the transesophageal echocardiogram with the highest sensibility and we conclude that an early diagnosis and medical and/or surgical treatment decreases the mortality rate in these patients.