Contributor: Jared Scott, MD

Educational Pearls:

• Variability of organisms in infecting the myocardial valves
• Duke Criteria for Infective Endocarditis includes three categories that can be used to definitively diagnose endocarditis
  • Pathologic Criteria
    • pathological evidence of infection
  • Major Clinical Criteria
    • positive blood cultures
    • positive echocardiogram findings (TEE is more sensitive than a TTE)
  • Minor Clinical Criteria (must include all of the below criteria)
    • Fever
    • Underlying heart condition or IV drug use
    • Vascular phenomena (includes Janeway’s lesions)
    • Immunologic phenomena (includes Osler’s nodes, Roth spots)
    • Positive blood cultures or serologic evidence of infection with bacteria known to cause endocarditis
• Some studies show up to a 33% one-year mortality of people diagnosed with endocarditis
• This criteria was developed by David Durack, MD and he was affiliated with Duke University, shout out to Dr. Pete Bakes!

References

https://www.mdcalc.com/duke-criteria-infective-endocarditis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NLtNg-pqv0

Holland TL, Baddour LM, Bayer AS, Hoen B, Miro JM, Fowler VG Jr. Infective endocarditis. Nat Rev Dis Primers. 2016;2:16059. Published 2016 Sep 1. doi:10.1038/nrdp.2016.59

Summarized by John Spartz, MS4 | Edited by Erik Verzemnieks, MD

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