“…Despite major medical advances in diagnostics and therapy, IE is still associated with severe morbidity and a high early mortality of around 20% [ 3 , 10 , 11 ]. In cases of IE, female gender shows no protective effect, since several studies demonstrate a similar or higher early mortality when compared to men [ 8 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. The persistently poor overall prognosis regarding hospital mortality is, besides the female gender, attributed to several possible causative factors such as the increase of elderly and more severely ill patients, previous cardiac surgery, an increasing rate of IE in prosthetic heart valves and devices, cerebral complications, renal failure, preoperative ventilation, New York Heart Association heart failure (NYHA) stage, paravalvular abscess, S. aureus infection, and withholding of indicated surgery [ 3 , 10 , 12 , 16 ].…”