O papel da cirurgia na endocardite infeciosa está a modificar‐se?

When an editor of a journal is asked to write an editorial comment on an article in the acceptance of which he/she played an important part, he/she faces the dilemma of whether to highlight its strengths or to comment on its weaknesses. Some of the latter, of course, are overcome during the editorial process (the thoroughness of which readers are generally unaware), since what is eventually published is the final product of a wide-ranging review process. There are many reasons why an article may be accepted or rejected for publication. Acceptance of the article by Moreira et al. of the medical-surgical cardiology group at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon published in this issue of the Journal could very well be justified by the conclusion of one of the reviewers: ‘‘Informative, considering the scarcity of data about the disease in Portugal.’’ In fact, around four years ago, the São João Hospital group in Porto published a similar study in the Journal, but even so, a comparison between the experiences of two such geographically distant centers seems worthwhile. In the article by Moreira et al., the authors present a retrospective study of 233 cases of definite or likely infective endocarditis (IE) observed at a single center, which, in the