Infective endocarditis in Portugal: Changing epidemiology but still a deadly disease

Gilbert Habib (1, 2)

1 Département de Cardiologie [Hôpital de la Timone - APHM]
2 MEPHI - Microbes évolution phylogénie et infections

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a severe disease associated with high morbidity and mortality1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and whose incidence and severity remain unchanged despite improvements in diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. The main reason for this apparent unchanged prognosis is because IE is a changing disease, with older patients with more severe disease, changing epidemiological profiles and greater numbers of patients with prosthetic valve or device-related infections.5, 6 Diagnostic strategies and management may differ between countries and these differences are currently investigated in the EURO-ENDO registry,7 which prospectively included 3116 adult patients (2470 from Europe, 646 from non-European Society of Cardiology (ESC) countries), admitted to 156 hospitals in 40 countries between January 2016 and March 2018 with a diagnosis of IE based on ESC 2015 diagnostic criteria.8 In this issue of the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology, de Sousa et al.9 present a systematic review of all published series of patients hospitalized with IE in Portuguese hospital centers. This review gives us the opportunity to compare the IE characteristics observed in Portugal to those of IE currently observed in other parts of the world, as reported in European Infective Endocarditis Registry (EURO-ENDO).7

Domains: Bacteriology; Virology; Parasitology; Cardiology and cardiovascular system; Emerging diseases; Infectious diseases

Gilbert Habib. Infective endocarditis in Portugal: Changing epidemiology but still a deadly disease. Revista Portuguesa de Cardiología, 2021, 40 (3), pp.219-220. ⟨10.1016/j.repc.2021.01.006⟩. ⟨hal-03243252⟩