From January 1987 to January 1992,105 patients (64 males; age x 35.7 years) were referred to surgery due to valvar edocarditis. Forty-five patients had the aortic valve involved (32 in the native valve and 12 in a prosthesis previously implanted (6 metalic and 6 biological and 1 case of previous valve suture). Twelve patients needed removal of abscess on the valve which was compromising the valvar ring and contiguous structures. Endocarditis in the mitral valve was treated in 34 patients (18 in native valve and 16 in artificial prosthesis). In such patients we performed 2 sutures of the valves and implanted 24 biological and 8 metalic valves. Involvement of both mitral and aortic apparatus, was present in 18 cases. In such patients, 11 received biological prosthesis in mitral position, and metalic prosthesis in aortic position. One of these cases, that presented an abscess in both mitral and aortic valve, received a single patch of bovinum pericardium and the prosthesis were partially implanted in such patch. The remained 8 cases presented endocarditis in congenital heart disease (6 cases), in pacemaker electrode (1 case) and 1 case in the 3 valves (aortic, mitral and tricuspid). The in-hosipital mortality rate was: 18% (23.5% to mitral; 15.5% to aortic and 16.6% to mitral-aortic valves endocarditis). We concluded that surgery for endocarditis has improved the results, mainly after surgeons became more aggressive pulling out the infected tissue with great resections and correcting the additional deffects, in an attempt to restore the heart integrity and valvular function.
endocarditis, infective