Infective endocarditis

Abstract

Infective endocarditis (IE) results when microbial agents infect the endothelial surface of the heart. Heart valves are the most common site for this process; however, occasionally infection develops on the low-pressure side of a ventricular septal defect, on chordae tendinae, or on mural endocardium that has been damaged by an aberrant jet of blood or an intracardiac foreign device (trans-venous pacing lead, pulmonary artery catheter). Very rarely a similar process, infective endarteritis, arises when arteriovenous shunts, arterioarterial shunts (patent ductus arteriosus), or a coarctation of the aorta is involved. The cardinal lesion developing at these sites is the vegetation, a mass of platelets and fibrin, engendered by the procoagulant activity of infecting organisms and injured local tissue, wherein are enmeshed the causative microorganism and scant inflammatory cells. © 2006 Humana Press Inc.