Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) can provide comprehensive anatomic and physiological information about the cardiovascular system. The review article describes the application of CMR to several simple congenital heart lesions: atrial septal defects and other interatrial communications, ventricular septal defects, patent ductus arteriosus, partially anomalous pulmonary venous connection,...

Rheumatic fever and particularly rheumatic heart disease have always been regarded as rare conditions below the age of 5 years and as very rare below 3 years (Holt and McIntosh, 1953). Reported cases are few and no account of the clinical pattern of the disease in the small child has been found in the literature. In the Rheumatic and Heart Clinic, in Cairo University Hospital, we have had the o...

With interest, we read the article by Hajar[1] “Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease: A Historical Perspective.’’ We want to correct the mistake associated with the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease in this article. There was a mistake in Table 2 called “Summary of the American Heart Association revised 2015 Jones criteria.” The statement “Low‐risk population: Acute rheumatic fever (...

BACKGROUND The reason why some individuals but not others are susceptible to rheumatic fever and chronic rheumatic heart disease is not understood. Because of the substantial evidence that poverty is an important determinant of the disease and must operate in early life, we have investigated the role of the early environment in an ecological study using 20(th) century mortality as an index of d...

Acute rheumatic fever is a nonsuppurative, immune-mediated consequence of group A streptococcal pharyngitis (strep throat). Recurrent or severe acute rheumatic fever can cause permanent cardiac valve damage and rheumatic heart disease, which increases the risk for cardiac conditions (e.g., infective endocarditis, stroke, and congestive heart failure). Antibiotics can prevent acute rheumatic fev...

BACKGROUND Epidemiologic studies of the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease have used clinical screening with echocardiographic confirmation of suspected cases. We hypothesized that echocardiographic screening of all surveyed children would show a significantly higher prevalence of rheumatic heart disease. METHODS Randomly selected schoolchildren from 6 through 17 years of age in Cambodia a...

The frequency of antigen types (A, B, C, and DR) in an unselected group of 25 patients with chronic rheumatic heart disease and an unselected group of 15 patients with acute rheumatic fever was compared with that in a group of 100 healthy volunteers. All patients and controls were Arabs of Saudi origin. Only the frequency of HLA-DR4 was significantly different in the controls and the patient gr...

Regular consumption of vitamin D doses can improve heart function in patients with heart failure. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of vitamin D on the recovery process of neonates, infants, and children with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) following reconstructive cardiac surgery. Materials and Methods: In this sing...