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Abstract
Infective endocarditis is a very unique disease, and its diagnosis particularly in blood culture negative patients has been a problem that required all the efforts to solve, as blood culture positivity is the corner stone of diagnosis. The aim of this work is to evaluate multiplex PCR in the diagnosis of IE and compare its performance to conventional PCR, blood culture and serological testing. Results showed positivity of blood culture with a percentage of 17% , and Staphylococcus aureus was the isolated organism in 15% of the studied population. Multiplex PCR evaluation against blood culture regarded as the gold standard showed Sensitivity 85.7%, Specificity 60.6%, positive predictive value 31.6% and negative predictive value 95.2%. Final conclusion of our study is that PCR - based techniques cannot replace basic culture techniques, and must be interpreted cautiously and hand in hand with culture and serological tests as, all of those techniques are crucial and they supplement each other, depending on each patient’s clinical presentation and available samples