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Prosthetic valve endocarditis (PVE) complicates the clinical course of 1–6% of patients with prosthetic valves and it is one of the types of infective endocarditis with the worst prognosis. In early-onset PVE (that occurs within the first year after surgery), the microbiological profile is dominated by staphylococci. In late-onset PVE, the microorganisms are similar to native valve endocarditis. Clinical manifestations are very variable and depend on the causative microorganism. The diagnosis is established with the modified Duke criteria although they yield lower diagnostic accuracy than in native valve endocarditis. Transoesophageal echocardiography is the main imaging technique in everyday clinical practice in PVE as the sensitivity is higher than transthoracic echocardiography. The findings of other techniques, as cardiac computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography/CT, or single-photon emission computed tomography/CT have been recently recognized as new major diagnostic criteria and can be very useful in cases with a high level of clinical suspicion and negative echocardiography. Empirical antibiotic treatment should cover the most frequent microorganisms, especially staphylococci. Once the microbiological diagnosis is made, the antibiotic treatment is similar to native valve infective endocarditis, except for the addition of rifampicin in staphylococcal PVE and a longer length (up to 6 weeks) of the treatment. Surgical indications are also similar to native valve endocarditis, heart failure being the most common and embolic prevention the most debatable. Prognosis is bad, and during the follow-up, a team experienced with endocarditis is needed. Patients with a history of PVE should receive antibiotic prophylaxis if they undergo invasive dental manipulations.

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Background Cardiac surgery is required in approximately 50% of patients with left-sided infective endocarditis (IE) being a high-risk procedure specially during active phase of the disease. Purpose To evaluate the impact of cardiac surgery in the in-hospital mortality of left-sided IE. Methods We used a prospective cohort of consecutive patients with definite left-sided IE between 2000 and 2017 (n=1002). A predictive model of in-hospital mortality was derived by adding the variable cardiac surgery to the already published ENDOVAL score. The benefit of cardiac surgery was calculated with the mean difference between the risk of in-hospital mortality considering urgent surgery and considering no surgery for each patient. Results The predictive model showed good discriminative capacity with an area under the ROC curve of 0.861 (95% CI: 0.830 - 0.891) and a good calibration (p-value in the Hosmer-Lemeshow test of 0.353). Figure shows the in-hospital mortality prediction of each patient in case of no-surgery (orange), urgent surgery (yellow) or real decision (blue). Mean reduction of in-hospital mortality risk in case of surgery for patients with a theoretical risk of in-hospital mortality between 0–20% in absence of surgery was 3.2±1.6%. For patients with a theoretical risk between 20–40% in absence of surgery the mean reduction was 8.1±1.1%. For patients with a theoretical risk between 40–60% in absence of surgery the mean reduction was 10.7±0.3%. For patients with a theoretical risk between 60–80% in absence of surgery the mean reduction was 9.7±0.9%. For patients with a theoretical risk between 80–100% in absence of surgery the mean reduction was 4.6±2.1%. Conclusion Urgent cardiac surgery is a protective factor of in-hospital mortality for all patients with left-sided IE but especially for those with intermediate risk. Figure 1 Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: Public Institution(s). Main funding source(s): Gerencia Regional de Salud, Junta de Castilla y Leόn