**1. Introduction**

Infective endocarditis (IE) risk is strongly associated with underlying cardiac disease. This chapter will review the pathology, mechanisms and estimated risks according to lesionspecific groups. Echocardiographic predictors of IE will be discussed along with the increasingly reported occurrence of IE in 'normal valves'.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
