TEE Guided Surgical Treatment in Active Infective Endocarditis: Results of a Single Centre Four Year Experience

Surgery is the treatment of choice in complicated prosthetic valves endocarditis [1, 2]. Medical treatment alone is rarely effective in active Infective Endocarditis (IE) on native valves [3]. In patients microbiologically “cured” residual valve damage may be associated with significant hemodynamic changes leading to a decreased life expectancy. Surgical treatment has been demonstrated to be the only independent predictor of long-term survival in a large study conducted in France on patients admitted to hospital for IE [4]. Recently a large multicentre study showed that surgery was associated with a decreased risk of both in-hospital and late mortality [5]