Introduction
The incidence of infective endocarditis (IE) has increased over the last
decades. Between January 2016 and March 2018, the European Infective
Endocarditis Registry (Euro-Endo)2 recorded 3,116
adult patients with IE according to diagnostic criteria in 2015 of theEuropean Society of Cardiology (ESC)3.
IE was most frequent on native valves (56.6%), followed by prosthetic
valves (30.1%) and, finally, on intracardiac devices (9.9%). The
majority of cases were community-acquired IE (65.66%) and the most
frequently isolated microorganism was Staphylococcus sp (44.1%),
followed by Enterococcus sp (15.8%) and Streptococcus sp(12.3%). The main complications were embolisms in 20.6% of the
patients, which usually associated with right and aortic valve IE, even
more frequently if caused by Staphylococcus aureus or vegetations
existed.
Regarding location, left IE was more common than right IE. The aortic
valve was the most frequently affected valve (49.5%), then the mitral
valve (42%) and the tricuspid valve (11.4%), being the pulmonary valve
(PV) the least frequent with only 2.4% of the
cases3,5.
Most often, pulmonary valve infective endocarditis (PVIE) occurs in
active injecting-drug abusers or whenever chronic vascular accesses or
pacemakers are present5. Other predisposing risk
factors for native valve IE are immunosuppression, diabetes mellitus,
cancer, kidney dialysis and HIV. The incidence for native PVIE is
reckoned to be solely around 0.2 to 1.2%1.
An explanation of the clinical presentation, echocardiograms, the
surgical procedure and postoperative care of an adult patient with
native PVIE and no significant medical history nor risk factors is
included.