Endocarditis From Staphylococcus aureus
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chikamd@tokyo-med.ac.jp
Department of Internal Medicine II/Cardiology
Tokyo Medical University
Tokyo
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- ENDOCARDITIS
- STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS
To the Editor: The global emergence of infective endocarditis (IE) caused by Staphylococcus aureus was reported by Dr Fowler and colleagues.1 Among 1779 patients with IE enrolled between 2000 and 2003 from the United States, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the Middle East, the most common causative pathogen was S aureus (558 cases, 31.4%). However, in Japan S aureus was still the second most common cause of IE (17.1%) after Streptococcus viridans (31.7%) found in a nationwide surveillance between 2000 and 2001.2 It would therefore be important to know if there was any variation in the prevalence of S aureus IE among the international regions in their study.
In addition, Fowler et al described important characteristics of patients with S aureus IE. Stroke was the most important determinant of mortality by multivariate analysis. Risk of embolization in IE based on the echocardiographic assessment of vegetations has been …
