What are the clinical manifestations of subacute bacterial endocarditis

Subacute bacterial endocarditis, also known as subacute infective endocarditis, is caused by streptococcal infection, which often leads to infection of the mitral valve and aortic valve. Gradually, growths will form after the disease progresses. If these growths fall off, it can easily affect health and cause great harm. For example, it can easily cause fever and mental disorders. It causes great harm to life safety.

(1) General manifestations:

Most cases have a slow onset, low fever, fatigue, and a few have an acute onset with chills, high fever, or embolism. Some patients have a history of oral surgery, respiratory tract infection, abortion, or childbirth before onset.

(2) Fever:

Fever is most common when accompanied by systemic infection. It is often characterized by persistent fever of unknown cause for more than one week. Irregular low-grade fever, mostly between ℃ and ℃. It can also be intermittent fever or remittent fever, accompanied by fatigue, night sweats, progressive anemia, splenomegaly, and clubbing of fingers in the late stage.

(3) Mental disorders:

Patients may have mild psychiatric symptoms, but rarely severe mental confusion or delirium. If endocarditis is complicated by subarachnoid hemorrhage or meningitis, agitated behavior, mental confusion, and impaired consciousness are common, and may also be accompanied by focal neurological signs.

(4) Almost all untreated acute patients die within 4 weeks

The natural history of subacute cases is generally >6 months. Heart failure is the most serious factor affecting the prognosis. Most patients can be bacteriologically cured, except for endocarditis caused by drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria and fungi. However, the short-term and long-term mortality of this disease is still high.

(5) Symptoms develop slowly

Symptoms include fever, irregular fever, fatigue, sweating, progressive anemia, weight loss, joint pain, etc., and symptoms of organ embolism may appear in the later stages.