CONGRESS ABSTRACT

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a life-threatening microbial infection with high mortality rate (6–50% in-hospital and 19–82% at 5-years)1.Guidelines for management of infective endocarditis underline the importance of multidisciplinary approach with an Endocarditis Team (ET) for the complexity of disease and for prognosis which depends on patients’ characteristics, microorganisms involved and local or systemic complications.ET includes specialists that define multimodality imaging approach to confirm  diagnosis and to exclude local or systemic complications, discuss timing of antibiotic therapy, indication and timing of surgical treatments and follow-up. This study was a retrospective analysis based on a population of 86 patients from Infermi Hospital, Rimini, who received a diagnosis of IE from 2019 to 2021 thanks to a multidisciplinary approach. Among 86 patients, 76 (88,4%) had early-diagnosed IE and 10 (11,3%) had late-diagnosed IE.Early-diagnoses IE was defined when diagnoses occurred within 30 days from first symptoms.The aim of this study was to assess the impact of ET on timeliness of diagnosis and prognosis.Comparing the two groups, in the early-diagnosed IE we found higher rate of risk factors for endocarditis and systemic embolisation (27,6% vs. 20%), with Staphylococcus and Streptococcus as the most frequent causative pathogens (43,4% and 31,5%).More frequently the late-diagnosed IE group had mechanical prosthetic valves (20% vs 7,8%) with a higher rate of  cardiac surgery (80% vs 35,5%), cardiac valves complications such as abscesses, perforations and pseudo-aneurysms (20% vs 18,4%) and a higher rate of intra-hospital mortality (40% vs 18,4%). Streptococcus and Enterococcus were most involved in the late-diagnosed group.Several trials demonstrated that presence of ET reduces 1-year mortality from 18.5% to 8.2% 2 and in-hospital mortality from 28% to 13% 3. Our preliminary study confirms the importance of ET application to improve early diagnosis (88.4%) and to reduce mortality. Bibliography:1.Kouijzer et al., Native valve, prosthetic valve, and cardiac device-related infective endocarditis: A review and update on current innovative diagnostic and therapeutic strategies(2022). 2.Botelho-Nevers et al. Dramatic reduction in infective endocarditis-related mortality with a management-based approach(2009). 3.Chirillo,F.et al. Impact of a multidisciplinary management strategy on the outcome of patients with native valve infective endocarditis(2013).