Hemolytic anemia in native valve infective endocarditis: a rare case report and review of literature.

Abstract

Hemolytic anemia (HA) is not a common presentation in infectiousendocarditis (IE) and has only been reported in very few cases. Althoughdiseased valves may cause shearing stress that fragments RBCs, similar to thatassociated with mechanical heart valves, an autoimmune hemolytic process hasalso been implicated. We reported a case of patient who had HA secondary toacute IE due to MRSA. The anemia completely resolved after treating the (IE) .The cause was most likely mechanical shearing (schistocytes or fragmentedRBCs present on peripheral smear) by the large vegetation on native valve ;autoimmune hemolysis was considered unlikely in this case due to consistently negative Coombs tests and failure to respond to corticosteroids.