Epidemiological and Clinical Features of Patients with Rheumatic Heart Disease Tripoli Medical Centre Tripoli/Libya 2012 - 2017

Abstract

Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) remains a major public health problem in developing countries and accounts for a major
proportion of all cardiovascular disease in children and young adults in African countries. Aim: to study the pattern of
valve involvement in RHD and to know the type and prevalence of complications.
Case series study, conducted by reviewing the clinical data of patients with diagnosis of rheumatic heart disease.
Information obtained from the records included the age, gender, clinical presentation echocardiographic diagnosis and
complications.
A total of 384 medical records were reviewed. There were 91 males and 293 females (ratio 1: 3) and their ages ranged
from 20 to 82 (mean 46.7 ± 12) years. Mitral stenosis was the commonest echocardiographic diagnosis present in 210
patients (54.7%). Seventy (18.5%) patients had mixed mitral valve disease, 42 (10.9%) had mixed aortic valve disease;
isolated rheumatic mitral valve involvement was more common than isolated rheumatic aortic valve involvement (84.1
% versus 43.7%). Complications of RHD observed in this study included: atrial fibrillation (AF) (24.2%), secondary
pulmonary hypertension (PHT) (20.6%), and congestive heart failure (CHF) was seen (8 %) of cases.
The RHD is still an important cause of cardiac morbidity and a large proportion of the patients already had complications
at diagnosis. There is a need for multicenter study at national level to discover the real burden of the RHD in our
community