Endocarditis-Associated Paravalvular Abscesses

Study objective To determine whether standard clinical and transthoracic echocardiographic criteria considered to be suggestive of the presence of endocarditis-associated paravalvular abscess are predictive of which patients would benefit from reliable but invasive transesophageal echocardiographic investigations for abscess. Design Retrospective chart review. Setting A 630-bed university hospital. Patients Forty-eight patients with 51 episodes...