Rheumatic heart disease in patients from Iraq: Some clinical observations

ABSTRACT

This prospective clinical study which was carried out on 79 patients with rheumatic heart disease "RHD" showed the absence of previous rheumatic history in about half of the cases. In addition there was a significant difference in the pattern of valvular involvement regarding the presence or absence of previous rheumatic history. These two observations suggested the possibility of other non rheumatic etiology in certain cases of valvular heart diseases which are traditionally labelled as rheumatic. The high incidence of initial attacks of rheumatic fever "RF" together with the high rate of recurrence of rheumatic activity "RR" in our adult patients were a substantial evidence to the inadequecy of the current measures of antirheumatic chemoprophylaxis. Lastly,the significantly high distribution of blood group B and low distribution of blood group A in our RHD patients as compared with the control group, may reflect the presence of susceptible and resistant phenotypes in patients with RHD