Ocular Complications of Endocarditis

Cardiac complications are the most common complications in patients with infective endocarditis, and they can be related to significant mortality and morbidity. (1) Extracardiac manifestations along with their historical descriptions such as splinter hemorrhages, emboli, Osler’s nodes, Janeway and Bowman lesions of the eye, Roth’s spots, patechiae and clubbing generally result from thromboemboli or septic emboli. (2) Inflammatory complications may occur as a result of septic emboli, and these include endogenous (metastatic) endophthalmitis, focal abscess, and vasculitis. (3) In this chapter we mainly focus on the endogenous endophthalmitis arising as a complication of infective endocarditis.