Clinical value of echocardiography in diagnosing infective endocarditis in children / 中华医学超声杂志（电子版）

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the value of echocardiography in diagnosing infective endocarditis (IE) in children. Methods The shape, size, echogenicity, distribution of vegetations and valvular function of the heart were observed by transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) in 30 patients with suspected IE. We correlated TTE ifndings with the results of hemoculture and serologic test. Results Vegetations were observed in all patients by echocardiographyseven patients with tricuspid valve vegetations, two with mitral valve vegetations, three with pulmonary valve vegetations, three with main pulmonary artery vegetations, three with aortic valve vegetations, two with aortic valve abscess, and two with vegetations in right atrium. After anti-infection therapy, the size of vegetations in iffteen patients became smaller and the less echogenic than before. Vegetations disappeared in two patients. Vegetation was recurrent repeatedly in one case. Ten patients recovered after operation. Two severe cases died. Five patients underwent TTE again one week after the previous negative TTE. Of them, echocardiography demonstrated vegetations in three cases. However, no vegetations were found in rest two cases because antibiotics had been used at early stage. In addition, echocardiography demonstrated one patient with mitral valve vegetation. But the lesion was ifnally conifrmed to be operating suture. The sensitivity and specificity of TTE in detecting vegetations were 88.0% and 80.0%, respectively. Blood cultures were positive in twenty-seven cases and were negative in three cases. Conclusions The early diagnosis of IE is important to improve patient′s prognosis. It takes a long time in organism cultivation before achieving the clinical diagnosis. TTE can help obtain an early diagnosis stage of IE, and provide the assessment of size and location of vegetation. It plays an important role in treatment and prognosis prediction.