Endocarditis : Diagnosis and Management

This new addition will provide an update on the current prophylaxis guidelines, the new diagnostic approach in the detection of the disease, the proposed schemas to predict prognosis, and the new treatment strategies to improve the outcome of patients afflicted with this serious condition.  

Endocarditis is a serious disease with ahigh rate of morbidity and mortality. The in-hospital mortality remains at 10-20%. The poor outcome ofpatients with this condition is due in large part to the delay in making thediagnosis which frequently can be elusive. As a result of its wide spectrum of manifestations, endocarditis canmimic many different conditions ranging from stroke to renal failure.  In order to minimize the delay in diagnosis,clinicians need to always be mindful of the possibility that endocarditis maybe the cause of the symptoms. There have been ongoing efforts in thedevelopment of molecular probes and new imaging techniques to improve ourability to identify the disease early and reliably.  New treatment strategies have been studiedwith the aim to prevent complications and to improve survival.

Thestructure of the previous edition is preserved. The book is divided into three sections with the first section coveringthe historical perspective and basic principles, the second section dealingwith the diagnosis and management approaches and the last section on specificclinical situations that pose management dilemmas.  All the chapters will be updated to include newinformation from the recent studies.  Inparticular, the approach to the use of antibiotic prophylaxis will beextensively revised to present and discuss the implications of the currentguidelines from different national societies including the American HeartAssociation and the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

This update is timely and should be ofinterest to all clinicians involved in the care of patients with this seriousdisease. This new edition will be a good resource forinternists, infectious disease specialists, cardiologists and cardiac surgeonsalike .