Rheumatic Heart Disease in Developing Countries

Rheumatic fever has receded as an important health problem in wealthy countries. Dr. Jonathan Carapetis writes that for everyone else, rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are bigger problems than ever and warrant urgent attention. Only 30 or 40 years ago, rheumatic fever was a common topic in the Journal . A PubMed search for articles on rheumatic fever published between 1967 and 1976 returned 55 New England Journal of Medicine articles — fewer than for endocarditis (77) but more than for stroke and syphilis (24 entries each). A similar PubMed search for the decade 1997 through 2006 yielded just eight entries for rheumatic fever. This trend holds for all Medline-indexed journals: an average of 516 articles on rheumatic fever per year from 1967 through 1976, but only 172 per year from 1997 through 2006. . . .