Advantages and Limitations of Direct PCR Amplification of Bacterial 16S-rDNA from Resected Heart Tissue or Swabs Followed by Direct Sequencing for Diagnosing Infective Endocarditis: A Retrospective Analysis in the Routine Clinical Setting

Table 4

Comparison of PCR with results of tissue or swab culture. For a small patient group () results of both methods (PCR amplification and culture of swab or tissue) were exceptionally gained upon special clinical request. The direct comparison is provided in this table; these data were not used for further computation of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of broad-range PCR.

Result	Culture	PCR
Positive in both methods, concordance on species level	3 ×  Enterococcus faecalis
	Staphylococcus epidermidis
	Staphylococcus lugdunensis
Positive but discordant	Staphylococcus epidermidis	Streptococcus gordonii
	Staphylococcus pasteuri	Streptococcus gallolyticus
Culture positive but PCR amplification negative	2 ×  Enterococcus faecium	neg
	Staphylococcus aureus	neg
	Coagulase-negative staphylococci	neg