Table 1.

Future research questions concerning diagnosis and treatment in SAB.

1. The absence of which risk factors and negative results of an initial work-up makes additional diagnostic investigations for metastatic infections including infective endocarditis unnecessary? 2. Which novel predictive factors can improve the discriminatory power of clinical risk stratification? 3. Is a risk-based diagnostic work-up associated with improved outcomes and is it cost-effective? 4. How can clinical prediction scores be improved to reduce the number of patients classified as high risk for endocarditis while maintaining acceptable negative predictive value? 5. Which high-risk patients need an [18F]FDG-PET/CT? 6. Which patients can be treated with oral antibiotics and/or for a shorter duration? 7. Which biomarkers are useful for individualizing treatment duration?