Prosthetic Valve Endocarditis and Bloodstream Infection Due to

Prosthetic valve endocarditis (PVE) due to fast-growing nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) has been reported anecdotally. Reports of PVE with slowly growing NTM, however, are lacking. We present here one case of PVE and one case of bloodstream infection caused byMycobacterium chimaera. Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR indicated a relatedness of the twoM. chimaera strains. Both patients had heart surgery 2 years apart from each other. A nosocomial link was not detected. Infective endocarditis due to nontuberculous mycobacteria(NTM) is a rare complication after heart valve surgery. The re-ported cases in the literature are associated with the insertion of biological and also of mechanical valves (1). Cases of prosthetic valve endocarditis (PVE) due to NTMoften involve rapidly grow-ing mycobacteria. To date, there have been no concise reports on slowly growing mycobacteria, such as the Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC), as the agent causing PVE. However, the MAC is found occasionally on resected heart valves. A case series examin-ing microbiological cultures from valves found slowly growing NTM in 5.5 % of the cases without further clinical or histopatho-logical evidence of infective endocarditis (IE) (2)