[Endocarditis in patients with endocardial catheters; role of transesophageal echocardiography for its detection (report of 4 clinical cases)].
To evaluate the usefulness of transesophageal echocardiography in the diagnosis of patients with non-prosthetic intracardiac material and clinical suspicion of endocarditis. A brief review of the literature was also made.


METHODS
All the clinical cases of patients with febril syndrome, clinical suspicion of endocarditis and non-prosthetic intracardiac material who were referred to our Department of Echocardiography for an echocardiographic examination - transthoracic and transesophageal approach.


RESULTS
Four patients were found from our revision, three of them had a permanent endocavitary pacing catheter and one had a central venous catheter. Transthoracic echocardiography confirmed the diagnosis in three patients, but did not provide accurate information in two cases due to deficient acoustic window. Transesophageal echocardiography confirmed the clinical suspicion of endocarditis in all four patients and gave more information about the size and site of vegetations, involvement of cardiac valves and existence or absence of abcesses.


CONCLUSIONS
Transesophageal echocardiography improves the diagnosis of right heart endocarditis in patients with non-prosthetic intracardiac material providing more accurate information, sometimes with prognostic and therapeutic importance.
Galrinho
A
A
Serviço de Cardiologia. Hospital de Santa Marta.
Branco
L
L
Pitta
M L
ML
da Cruz
A G
AG
Salomão
S
S
Antunes
A M
AM
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006328:Cardiac Catheterization; D017548:Echocardiography, Transesophageal; D004696:Endocarditis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010138:Pacemaker, Artificial
Endocardite em doentes portadores de cateteres intracardíacos; papel do ecocardiograma transesofágico na sua detecção (A propósito de quatro casos clínicos).