Prognostic Significance of Valvular Involvement in Acute Rheumatic Fever

Abstract

PATIENTS who are convalescing from rheumatic fever either do or do not have heart disease. Of those who do not, some will later have signs of it. The studies^{1 2 3 4 5} that demonstrated this phenomenon suggested that the diagnosis "potential heart disease" be given to all rheumatic patients who do not have obvious cardiac damage because those in whom an abnormality eventually developed could not be initially distinguished from those who remained free of it.This distinction has considerable clinical and psychologic importance, but it could not be made by the existing studies because of several difficulties. In the first place the . . .