**7. Conclusion**

As technology has improved over the years, so has the ability to detect and guide the management of patients with infections. This has also paralleled the significant increase in the incidence of such infections as patients get older, develop more comorbidities (especially from lifestyle choices), have more implanted devices that can potentially get infected, and have more procedures that might infect cardiac structures (both native and prosthetic). Endocarditis remains a formidable problem—both in terms of diagnosis and management. Risks are high and, without doubt, a team approach is crucial to the successful management of these patients (**Figure 1**) [28, 29].

**Figure 1.** Components of an "Endocarditis Heart Team"—all focused on the patient.

While the goal of this text is not to be an all-inclusive reference on this topic—the hope is that it will provide a current update on some of the key topics that reflect the multiple, evolving, and difficult challenges in the assessment and therapies available for such a devastating problem.
