{"id":1105,"date":"2010-05-02T11:34:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T16:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2010\/05\/02\/rheumatic-heart-valve-disease-common\/"},"modified":"2019-02-26T20:50:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T01:50:36","slug":"rheumatic-heart-valve-disease-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2010\/05\/02\/rheumatic-heart-valve-disease-common\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Is Rheumatic Heart Valve Disease Common?&#8221; Asks Frank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just received an interesting question from Frank about rheumatic heart disease and heart valve surgery.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/rheumatic-heart-valve-disease.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">Surgical Repair Of Mitral Valve Stenosis Due to Rheumatic Fever<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Frank writes, &#8220;Hi Adam &#8211; I&#8217;m preparing for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/mitral-valve-repair-surgery.php\">mitral valve repair surgery due to stenosis<\/a> caused by rheumatic fever. So far, I have not come across many patients like me. I&#8217;m curious&#8230; Is rheumatic heart valve disease common? Or, am I the lucky <em>outlier<\/em>? Thanks, Frank&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After speaking with thousands of patients over the years, my gut response to Frank&#8217;s question is that his diagnosis is less common than other patients. However, this is not to say that Frank is alone. For example, if you type &#8220;rheumatic&#8221; into the search field on the side margin of this blog, you will see several patient stories relating to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/rheumatic-fever.php\">rheumatic fever<\/a>.To further evaluate Frank&#8217;s question, I just did some quick research about rheumatic fever and heart valve disorders. I found some helpful information from the American Heart Association (AHA).<\/p>\n<p>According to the AHA:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease killed 3,257\u00a0people in the United States\u00a0in 2006.<\/li>\n<li>Modern antibiotic therapy has sharply reduced mortality. In 1950, about 15,000\u00a0people in the United States\u00a0died of these diseases.<\/li>\n<li>From 1996 to 2006, the death rate from rheumatic fever\/rheumatic heart disease fell\u00a08.3 percent. Actual deaths declined\u00a026.2 percent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In reviewing these statistics, it appears that modern antibiotics (e.g. penicillin) are protecting patients against the negative impact of <span class=\"content\">Group A <em>Streptococcus<\/em>, the bacteria that causes rheumatic fever. The benefits of drug therapy are further understood when you consider that patients with rheumatic heart disease are at higher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/bacterial-endocarditis.php\">risk for bacterial endocarditis<\/a>, according to AHA.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/infective-endocarditis.jpg\" alt=\"Bacterial Endocarditis Diagram\" width=\"400\" height=\"320\" \/><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>While I have yet to find any clinical data about the incidence or frequency of heart valve surgery due to rheumatic fever, I hope the information above provides <em>some<\/em> insight into Frank&#8217;s question.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that the incidence of rheumatic heart disease is declining. Unfortunately, the bad news is that rheumatic fever continues to impact our hearts &#8211; especially patients in less developed countries who do not have access to antibiotics.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adams-updates"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}