[Clinical aspects of endocarditis]

Considering the incidence of infectious endocarditis this disease is still an important clinical entity in internal medicine departments. Leading symptoms are fever, cardiac murmurs, embolic phenomena, skin alterations and also sometimes CNS-disturbances. Two different clinical endocarditis entities can be separated: an acute aggressive course of endocarditis and the subacute course (endocarditis lenta). Diagnostic procedures are mainly based on positive blood cultures and echocardiographic detection of cardiac vegetations. In case of a progressive development of cardiac insufficiency, non treatable infection, large vegetations on valve and embolic phenomena a prosthetic valve implantation is indicated.