Other structures that may be involved include the interventricular septum, the chordae tendineae, the mural endocardium, or the surfaces of intracardiac devices.

Endocarditis is characterized by lesions, known as vegetations, which are masses of platelets, fibrin, microcolonies of microorganisms, and scant inflammatory cells.

[1] In the subacute form of infective endocarditis, a vegetation may also include a center of granulomatous tissue, which may fibrose or calcify.

Regardless, the diagnosis of endocarditis is based on clinical features, investigations such as an echocardiogram, and blood cultures demonstrating the presence of endocarditis-causing microorganisms.

Signs and symptoms include fever, chills, sweating, malaise, weakness, anorexia, weight loss, splenomegaly, flu-like feeling, cardiac murmur, heart failure, petechia (red spots on the skin), Osler's nodes (subcutaneous nodules found on hands and feet), Janeway lesions (nodular lesions on palms and soles), and Roth's spots (retinal hemorrhages).

[3] Symptoms may include fever, small areas of bleeding into the skin, heart murmur, feeling tired, and low red blood cells.

[2] As opposed to infective endocarditis, the vegetations in NBTE are small, sterile, and tend to aggregate along the edges of the valve or the cusps.

Also unlike NBTE, Libman-Sacks endocarditis does not seem to have a preferred location of deposition and may form on the undersurfaces of the valves or even on the endocardium.