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Polymicrobial right-sided infective endocarditis (IE) is a recognized syndrome, particularly among injection drug users. Despite the polymicrobial component, these patients typically have good outcomes, in part because injection drug users are often young with few comorbidities. To better characterize left-sided polymicrobial IE, researchers analyzed a prospective database of all patients with IE who were seen at three tertiary care centers in Spain from 1996 through 2014.
The researchers identified 1195 cases of definite IE, according to era-specific Duke criteria. Of the 1011 cases of left-sided IE, 60 (5.9%) were classified as polymicrobial — i.e., two or more organisms were obtained from at least three blood samples or were recovered fro…