Mimetic Features of Rheumatic-Fever Recurrences

Abstract

UNLIKE certain other common diseases of childhood, rheumatic fever leaves no known immunity and seems to create an increased susceptibility to recurrent attacks. The effects of these recurrent attacks have been unpredictable. Previous studies^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7} have demonstrated that many patients whose only initial major manifestation of the disease was arthritis or chorea or both had new attacks that resembled the previous ones and did not affect the heart. Although this repetitive pattern predominated, it was not universal. Other patients seemed to escape heart disease with their first episode but acquired evidence of it at later attacks. In another group, heart disease . . .