Background
Rheumatic fever (RF) still remained the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children and young adults. Permanent damage to the hearts valves after RF requires medical or surgical treatment. Rheumatic carditis is a pancarditis and it’s the most serious manifestation of the acute rheumatic process, since it is the only that can cause death during the acute attack or produce residual disability and late mortality. Echocardiography has become an invaluable tool in diagnosis and assessing the presence of carditis. The first attack may cause no clinical signs, but recurrent attacks may develop heart involvement. Aim of study is to establish role and important of echocardiography in diagnosis of silent carditis (SC) in children with RF.
Method
Between January 2003 and December 2013 retrospectively we analyzed medical records of 386 children admitted to our department with clinical and lab signs of RF. The mean age was 8.32 ± 3.2; average follow-up period was 48.7 ±9.3 months. Transthoracic echocardiography was performed and WHO echocardiographic criteria for making diagnosis of SC was accepted at the basis. All patients have been divided in two groups. Group I – patients with arthritis and chorea (143 patients); Group II – patients with arthralgia, syncope, palpitation and heart murmur (240 patients). All patients were treated with Benzathine-penicillin as a profilaxy.
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