English

Abstract

Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) is still a major public health problem in developing countries such as India. Present study was conducted in urban population of district Srinagar of J&K state (India). A study had been conducted in the same population in 1983 & the prevalence at that time was 5.9 / 1000. The aim of the present study was to know the present status of Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARF) & RHD in the same population since we have observed a significant decline in the attendance of these patients in OPD & wards of Sheri-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) Srinagar. A survey of school children aged between 6-16years studying in randomly selected private and government schools of Srinagar-city was done as a post-graduate research project at SKIMS Srinagar- a tertiary care hospital. A total of 5661 school children were examined. Eleven school children were found to have heart disease. Of these 4 had RHD, confirmed on Echocardiography while 7 had congenital heart disease (CHD) and were excluded from the study. No case of ARF could be identified. As per our study the prevalence of RHD is 0.7/1000 school children. The results observed were lower than that reported in earlier studies from developing countries, but are comparable to large studies conducted in Christian Medical College Vellore in 2003 & Gorakhpur in 2005-2006. Therefore it is concluded that there has been a dramatic decline in prevalence of RHD