ABSTRACT

Infective endocarditis still carries a high risk of morbidity and mortality in the current era. Rapid diagnosis, effective treatment, and prompt re-cognition of complications are essential for a good patient outcome. Ho-wever, time is usually wasted until the specific diagnosis is made and ef-fective treatment is started. Blood culture, the diagnostic test used in in-fective endocarditis, has been more commonly used for nonspecific orga-nisms, including streptococci and staphylococci. If a specific organism like brucella is responsible for infective endocarditis, the clinician should be suspicious of the patient’s symptoms to obtain an exact diagnosis. The-se symptoms can be not only the nonspecific brucellosis symptoms but also the symptoms related to infective endocarditis and its complications. This article focuses predominantly on a patient with infective endocardi-tis caused by Brucella melitensis.