Splenic abscess disclosing endocarditis

: A 54 year old man, hospitalised for thoraco-abdominal pain resulting from a septicemia which gives positive hemocultures for streptococcus D Bovis, is diagnosed to have a splenic abscess which will require splenectomy. At the same time, an endocarditis develops and gets worse, with auriculo-ventricular blockade and, especially, major aortic insufficiency, which is the cause of death by a brutal and massive pulmonary oedema. In the progression of an endocarditis, the occurrence of a splenic abscess, primary localisation of the initial septicemia or the secondary of an arterial septic embolism, is a rare contingency compared to the frequency of splenomegaly or splenic infarction: less than 2 percent of the cases in the literature. This very atypical and exceptional case serves as a reminder, on the one hand, of the diagnostic inadequacy of echocardiography which cannot visualise vegetation in the course of progressive endocarditis, and, on the other, of the prognostic importance of auriculoventricular blockade in septal and aortic endocardial lesions.