STUDY OBJECTIVE The aim was to determine the prevalence of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease and to initiate a programme of secondary prophylaxis in Sahafa Town, Sudan. DESIGN The study was a prospective case finding survey, carried out by a specially trained team headed by a cardiologist. SETTING The study involved high risk school children (5-15 years of age) from Sahafa Town in...

The incidence of acute rheumatic fever is decreasing rapidly in Malmo, Sweden. The findings of other investigators, which agree well with ours, indicate that this holds true for other parts of Scandinavia too. The frequency of rheumatic heart disease also seems to be rapidly decreasing. It is conceivable that the decrease in the incidence of rheumatic heart disease is even more pronounced than ...

We designed a pilot study of a training module for nurses to perform rheumatic heart disease echocardiography screening in a resource-poor setting. The aim was to determine whether nurses given brief, focused, basic training in echocardiography could follow an algorithm to potentially identify cases of rheumatic heart disease requiring clinical referral, by undertaking basic two-dimensional and...

BACKGROUND Echocardiography has been proposed as a method to screen children for rheumatic heart disease. The World Heart Federation has established guidelines for echocardiographic screening. In this study, we describe a rapid echocardiogram screening protocol according to the World Heart Federation guidelines in Samoa, endemic for rheumatic heart disease. METHODS We performed echocardiogram...

G ROUP A streptococcal infection initiates acute rheumatic fever; rheumatic valvular heart disease is a sequela that develops during or subsequent to the acute rheumatic episode. The mechanism by which the preceding streptococcal infection produces the arthritic and constitutional symptoms and valvular heart disease is unknown. Regardless of the mechanism involved, there is little doubt that pr...

BACKGROUND Previous studies indicate that compared with physical examination, Doppler echocardiography identifies a larger number of cases of rheumatic heart disease in apparently healthy individuals. OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease among students in a public school of Belo Horizonte by clinical evaluation and Doppler echocardiography. METHODS This was a cr...

Rheumatic fever is currently the major cause of acquired heart disease among children in South Africa.1 The incidence of acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is not declining. Recent figures quote the incidence of rheumatic fever as 0.6 0.7/1 000 population in the USA and Japan compared with 15 21/1 000 population in Asia and Africa.2 In a study conducted in 1975 in Sow...

G ROUP A streptococcal infection initiates acute rheumatic fever; rheumatic valvular heart disease is a sequela that develops during or subsequent to the acute rheumatic episode. The mechanism by which the preceding streptococcal infection produces the arthritic and constitutional symptoms and valvular heart disease is unknown. Regardless of the mechanism involved, there is little doubt that pr...

BACKGROUND Valvular heart disease is a leading cause of cardiovascular mortality, especially in China. More than a half of valvular heart diseases are caused by acute rheumatic fever. microRNA is involved in many physiological and pathological processes. However, the miRNA profile of the rheumatic valvular heart disease is unknown. This research is to discuss microRNAs and their target gene pat...