Assessing the risk of infective endocarditis in Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: a comparison of 4 scoring systems

In our cohort, the VIRSTA score reliably identified patients with S. aureus bacteremia (SAB) at low risk of infective endocarditis (IE). The LAUSTAPHEN score demonstrated comparable performance, warranting further validation. However, even with highly discriminative models, limited specificity may lead to overuse of transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), suggesting that its use should be guided by case-by-case clinical judgment rather than by scoring systems alone.