Risk factors for infective endocarditis in patients with enterococcal bacteremia: a case-control study.
BACKGROUND: Based on previous studies, enterococcal infective endocarditis (IE) is considered a unimicrobial, community-acquired disease of older Caucasian men. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We evaluated the relationship between enterococcal bacteremia and IE by comparing clinical and demographic characteristics of all cases of enterococcal IE within an 8-year period (n = 41) with controls randomly chosen from patients with enterococcal bacteremia without IE. RESULTS: By univariate and multivariable analyses, the presence of a prosthetic valve (PV) and infection with Enterococcus faecalis were significantly associated with IE, while age, gender, race, polymicrobial infection and community-acquired infection were not. Almost an equal number of women and men had enterococcal IE. Cases of enterococcal IE were commonly nosocomial (39%) and polymicrobial (17%). CONCLUSIONS: Enterococcal endocarditis can no longer be considered exclusively a unimicrobial, community-acquired disease of Caucasian men. Instead, our data suggest that the presence of a PV and infection by E. faecalis are associated with an increased risk for IE.
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- Survival Analysis
- Sex Distribution
- Severity of Illness Index
- Risk Factors
- Reference Values
- Probability
- Multivariate Analysis
- Middle Aged
- Microbiology
- Microbial Sensitivity Tests
Citation
Published In
DOI
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Location
Related Subject Headings
- Survival Analysis
- Sex Distribution
- Severity of Illness Index
- Risk Factors
- Reference Values
- Probability
- Multivariate Analysis
- Middle Aged
- Microbiology
- Microbial Sensitivity Tests