Case of prosthetic valve endocarditis with osteomyelitis associated with disregarded skin infection

© 2013 Nonaka et al; licensee Herbert Publications Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). This permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction Prosthetic valve endocarditis (PVE) is a serious condition associated with high mortality rate [1]. The causes of PVE vary from surgical procedure to superficial skin infection [2]. Since prosthetic valves are susceptible to external agents, patients after valve replacement are exposed to possible threats. Apart from dental caries, other regions of the body that are prone to infection, eg., the genitourinary tract, should be checked carefully to prevent PVE. However, sometimes it is difficult to identify latent infections in the body and recognize them as true causes of PVE. We describe here a case of PVE complicated by osteomyelitis that was hematogenously disseminated from a disregarded infected skin tumor on the head.