The number of patients operated on during the active phase of infective endocarditis is increasing constantly, mostly due to the rise in complicated situations caused by higher incidence of more virulent microorganisms and infections of indwelling surgical devices. The aim of this study was to asses whether early valve surgery could influence perioperative mortality in adults hospitalized for acute infective endocarditis. We performed a retrospective, cohort, observational study on a large unselected patient population who underwent surgery due to acute infective endocarditis between April 2005 and February 2018 at the Department for Cardiac and Transplant Surgery, University Hospital Dubrava. The results showed a statistically significant difference between the groups in several categories. The patients operated on after a period of 14 days were significantly older (mean 53.4 years) compared to the other group (mean 47.8). Furthermore, a greater number of the late-surgery group patients had moderate renal impairment and recieved hemodialysis in contrast to the early-surgery group, where most patients had normal renal function. There was a statistically significant difference in the urgency category as well (p-value<0.001). As expected, emergent surgeries were more often performed in the early-surgery group, while the late-surgery group mostly underwent urgent procedures. The results in the other categories revealed no statistically significant differences. In the early-surgery group 4 out of 75 (5.3%) patients died in the perioperative period, whereas in the late-surgery group the perioperative mortality rate was 10.0% (8 out of 80 patients). These results are clinically relevant, but display no statistical significance, considering the p-value of only 0.277.