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Heart 2000;84:3-4; doi:10.1136/heart.84.1.3
Copyright © 2000 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Cardiovascular Society
Heart 2000;84:3-4 ( July )

Editorial

Role of transoesophageal echocardiography in infective endocarditis

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Infective endocarditis continues to be an underdiagnosed and undertreated disease, in spite of a mortality which exceeds that of acute myocardial infarction. In the diagnosis of this disease, echocardiography---including transoesophageal echocardiography---has been a major breakthrough. While the traditional hallmarks of endocarditis were fever together with a new or changed heart murmur, cutaneous signs, and embolic events, echocardiography has enabled the direct visualisation of endocarditic lesions. Indeed, the widely acknowledged Duke criteria for endocarditis1 list echocardiographic signs as a major diagnostic criterion, which together with positive blood cultures allows the definite diagnosis of endocarditis (table 1). Recent work indicates that echocardiography should have an even more prominent place, because patients nowadays are very frequently pretreated with antibiotics before any blood cultures are drawn, leading to a high incidence of culture negative endocarditis.2

Table Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)

Transthoracic echocardiography detects vegetations with approximately 70% sensitivity.3 4 The use of transoesophageal echocardiography increases sensitivity and . . . [Full text of this article]
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