Nuclear Medicine for the Delineation of Endocarditis

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a serious disease caused by adherence of bacteria and platelets on the endocardium and heart valves. It may lead to persisting bacteraemia and serious complications, such as destruction of heart valves, congestive heart failure and septic embolism. In routine clinical practice, echocardiography is currently the standard imaging procedure for evaluation of possible endocarditis. The procedure is primarily indicated in patients with persisting bacteraemia in whom no focus of infection can be identified (Cheitlin et al. 1997). Since echocardiography may be false negative, the new Duke criteria — a classification system for patients suspected of endocarditis — were developed based on both clinical parameters and echocardiographic findings (Durack et al. 1994).