El anciano : un huésped peculiar en los procesos infecciosos

The ageing of the worldwide population, is a reality, and so it is the increase in the life expectancy; this seems to be good news, but, could this be also a problem? For the health care system it is, because sometimes the management of this group of people is difficult, because of the peculiar characteristics of them. Infectious diseases in the elderly, are not only more frequent, but also more severe. Severity has been associated to different factors, but the most interesting one, is that severity seems to be a consequence of a delay on the diagnosis and initiation of therapy, due to a non specific and even no suggestive clinical presentation. Infective endocarditis epidemiology has changed in the last years, showing an increase in the incidence of this pathology in people on their sixties or older. The diagnosis can not be suspected since the beginning, because is not evident clinically. The delay on the diagnosis may be potentially overcome by the early use of transesophageal echocardiography.