Carditis during Second Attacks of Rheumatic Fever

Abstract

A NUMBER of studies have reported that patients without clinical evidence of carditis in their first attack of rheumatic fever or chorea usually do not acquire carditis in subsequent attacks and often escape residual rheumatic heart disease. The reports, however, differ in the percentage of such patients with normal cardiac findings on follow-up examinations.In 1937 Roth and his co-workers1 reported data on the second attack in 149 children who had had polyarthritis without clinical signs of carditis. During their second attack 51 of these 149 children (34 per cent) had carditis. In 1938 Boone and Levine2 presented 225 cases . . .