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Case Reports
. 2017 Nov 17;11(1):324.
doi: 10.1186/s13256-017-1494-x.

Postpartum infective endocarditis with Enterococcus faecalis in Japan: a case report

Miku Tamura  1 , Mitsutaka Shoji  2 , Ken Fujita  1 , Shohei Nakamura  1 , Yurika Takahashi  1 , Yurika Suzuki  1 , Mika Asakura  1 , Shun Kimizuka  1 , Makiko Sasaki  1 , Katsuya Sugawara  1
Affiliations
Case Reports

Postpartum infective endocarditis with Enterococcus faecalis in Japan: a case report

Miku Tamura et al. J Med Case Rep. .

Abstract

Background: The clinical characteristics of infective endocarditis include the presence of predisposing cardiac disease, a history of illegal drug use, and high morbidity in the elderly. Only a few cases of the disease after delivery have been reported in the literature. We describe here a first case of enterococcal postpartum infective endocarditis without underlying disease in Japan.

Case presentation: We report the case of a 31-year-old Japanese woman with postpartum infective endocarditis by Enterococcus faecalis. She had no significant medical history or any unusual social history. After emergency surgery for severe mitral regurgitation and antimicrobial treatment for 6 weeks, she was discharged from our hospital and is now being monitored at an out-patient clinic.

Conclusions: We encountered a case of Enterococcus faecalis infective endocarditis that occurred in the native valve of a postpartum healthy woman. Although the pathogenesis of this case remains unclear, it could be due to bacteremia arising from the administration of prophylactic broad-spectrum antibiotics used for cesarean section. Previous use of cefotiam and urinary catheter insertion may be risk factors for nosocomial enterococcal bacteremia in this case.

Keywords: Enterococcus faecalis; Infective endocarditis; Postpartum period.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This case report was approved by the Ethics committee of Funabashi Municipal Medical Center, approval no. 28-45.

Consent for publication

Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and any accompanying images. A copy of the written consent is available for review by the Editor-in-Chief of this journal.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The susceptibility of Enterococcus faecalis by E-test. Enterococcus faecalis in this case did not show high-level gentamicin resistance
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Clinical course of the patient. Transitive graph showing the clinical course of the patient from day 1 (admission day and start of treatment) to day 35 (1 week before antibiotic treatment ended). Abbreviations: CRP C-reactive protein, Scr serum creatinine, WBC white blood cell
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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