Prophylaxis of Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease

Abstract

ACUTE rheumatic fever is a repetitive disease, and recurrences have been observed in 50 to 70 per cent of persons so afflicted.^{1 2 3 4} Bland and Jones,^{5 , 6} in a twenty-year follow-up study of 1000 patients, noted a gradual decrease in the recurrence rate with increasing passage of time after the first attack, but any single rheumatic episode may result in progressive deformity of the heart valves. Because of this close relation between the acute inflammatory process of rheumatic fever and the possibility of subsequent valvular scarring, efforts to prevent rheumatic heart disease were long directed toward elucidating the nature and cause of . . .