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.