Clinical, instrumental, and laboratory indicators associated with prosthetic valve endocarditis

Abstract

Aim. To evaluate clinical, instrumental and laboratory parameters associated with infective endocarditis of the prosthetic valve in patients in different observation groups.

Research methods. The study included 128 patients hospitalized in the Republican Scientific and Practical Centre “Cardiology” from 2016 to 2025, with suspected prosthetic valve endocarditis in accordance with the criteria proposed by researchers at Duke University. In accordance with the study design, patients underwent a number of clinical, instrumental and laboratory examinations. The patients of all groups were comparable in key clinical and laboratory data (p = 0.211).

Results and conclusion. In this study, the accuracy of PET method for confirming and excluding PVE based on the value of SUV = 2.5 as compared with the results of pathomorphological examination (confirmed and unconfirmed PVE) and long-term follow-up of patients with suspected PVE proved to be 63% and 94%. That is, the proportion of false positive results was quite high. In patients with SUVmax values > 5, PVE was confirmed in 100% of cases. However, PVE was also detected in 41.8% with SUVmax values ≤ 5, which indicated a high frequency of false-negative PET results. The values of the Cohen’s Kappa coefficient (k), used to assess the consistency of diagnostic methods, indicated that SUVmax ≥ 2.5 was not informative enough to confirm PVE, while SUVmax ≤5 was not informative enough to exclude PVE.