A case of endocarditis caused by Lactococcus garvieae and suggested methods for identification.

Lactococcus garvieae is a Gram-positive coccus that has morphological and biochemical similarities to enterococci. L. garvieae strains rare human pathogens, with only a few cases reported in the literature, mainly as a cause of infective endocarditis. L. garvieae is well known as a fish pathogen, and in some of the reported cases, the patients had a history of contact with raw fish. Some of the reported endocarditis patients had valvular damage as a predisposing condition. We report a case of L. garvieae endocarditis in a patient with no history of contact with raw fish and with history of valvular repair in an unaffected heart valve.