Infectious endocarditis a disease that evolves

Abstract

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a disease that has been changing its behavior in recent decades, in parallel with the development of advances in modern diagnostic techniques, the emergence of new antimicrobial therapies and the development of more sophisticated surgical treatments, with a high mortality rate and a substantial care cost for health systems in our country and around the world. There are three fundamental reasons why this disease remains difficult to handle: First, the mortality of IE remains very high and has not shown a variation in the past 30 years despite existing medical advances, so that this disease continues representing a poor prognosis and high mortality rate for those who suffer it. Second, IE is not a disease with a uniform behavior, but delivers a range of clinical presentations that vary in its initial manifestation, the underlying heart disease when present, the microorganism involved, the presence or absence of complications and the characteristics of each individual patient; and finally the incidence of IE is still very low, therefore there is a lack of wellstructured and randomized studies, the lack of research and lack of meta-analysis that allow management protocols and address IE in our current health care system.