Causes of heart infections: Infective endocarditis

ABSTRACT

Background: Infective Endocarditis is a rare but life – threatening infection of the internal cardiac tunic. It is divided into endocarditis of natural valves, prosthetic valves or endocarditis of implanted cardiac devises. Fast diagnosis and therapeutic treatment are important factors on which prognosis depends. Finding the microbiological factor that causes IE along with the knowledge of its characteristics and the region that the pathogen is located are of great importance for the design of the therapeutic plan of care.

Aim: The aim of this study was the systematic review of research articles according to the microbial pathogens that cause infective endocarditis.

Method: The methodology of the study included the review of articles of the international scientific literature. Usage of international databases was taken place, such as PubMed, Google Scholar and the scientific journal of Elsevier. The search was conducted amongst articles that were published during the time period of 2016 – 2019 and were written in English.

Results: A systematic research of articles was performed and all studies that did not comply with the set criteria were rejected, 13 articles were found that they agreed with the criteria of the applied methodology. These articles were analyzed in a single topic group, one that deals with the microbial etiologies that create infective endocarditis. The results agreed with each other according to the most common pathogens, by showing that staphylococci, streptococci and enterococci were the most common pathogen microorganisms that cause infective endocarditis.

Conclusions: Infective endocarditis is a disease whose etiology lies on a variety of microbiological pathogens, where the patient characteristics, the characteristics of the microorganism and its type and the fast recognition of the pathogen are an important pillar of treatment of these patients. New technics are believed to improve to the greatest extent possible the recognition of microbial factors.

Keywords: Infective, endocarditis, etiology, causes