RT Book, Section A1 Shiber, Joseph R. A2 Farcy, David A. A2 Chiu, William C. A2 Flaxman, Alex A2 Marshall, John P. SR Print(0) ID 55814558 T1 Chapter 38. Infectious Endocarditis T2 Critical Care Emergency Medicine YR 2012 FD 2012 PB The McGraw-Hill Companies PP New York, NY SN 978-0-07-162824-2 LK accessemergencymedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=55814558 RD 2024/03/28 AB Endocarditis, inflammation of the endocardial surface of the heart, can have numerous etiologies including mechanical irritation, neoplastic, autoimmune, or infectious diseases.1–4 This chapter will focus on the infectious causes that are typically bacteria, mycobacteria, and fungi. Although the cardiac valves are most commonly involved, the mural endocardium, septal defects, chordae tendineae, and even intracardiac medical equipment (pacemaker/defibrillator leads or septal occluder devices) can also be sites of infection.1–6 Infectious endocarditis (IE) has an incidence of 3.6/100,000 per year and accounts for 1/1,000 hospital admissions in the United States. There is a 2:1 male to female ratio with current overall in-patient mortality between 11% and 26%, although this figure may be drastically different for the various subsets of IE patients.1,3,7