Endocarditis

Infective endocarditis is an infection of the endocardial surface of the heart, most often a valve. It is uncommon, it is frequently missed early, and untreated it is close to uniformly fatal — which is why a patient with unexplained fever and a reason to have a susceptible heart deserves active suspicion rather than reassurance. What makes it distinctive is that it is an endovascular infection. The organism is not walled off in a tissue abscess; it is sitting on a surface washed by every liter of blood the heart moves. That single fact explains almost everything else about the disease: the persistent bacteremia, the need for prolonged intravenous therapy, the fever that does not settle, and the sudden catastrophic complications when a fragment breaks free. This lesson is written for United States women's health nurse practitioner practice. Endocarditis in pregnancy is uncommon and disproportionately dangerous: the physiological changes of pregnancy both mask the diagnosis and reduce the margin the patient has when a valve fails. The specialty contribution is recognizing maternal deterioration that pregnancy is hiding, and reasoning about...