Spectrum of rheumatic heart disease with complications and outcome after surgery

Background: RHD is a chronic heart condition caused by rheumatic fever. RHD is a disease affecting predominantly those living in poverty with inadequate access to health care and unchecked exposure to group A streptococcus. Aim: This study was carried out in our tertiary level hospital to study the magnitude of RHD in the overall cardiac outpatients and inpatients and the spectrum of cardiac involvement with complications and outcome after surgery. Material and methods: Present study was hospital based cross-sectional study over a period of 22 months at Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery including 39 patients with clinical and echocardiographic evidence of definite rheumatic heart disease and underwent valve repair. Information obtained included age, gender, names of referring hospital/physician, clinical diagnosis and echocardiographic findings. Results: 20 -30 years of age group was most affected age group following 31-40 years most of the people were between 20-40 years. Male to female ratio was around 1:1.7 showing female predominance. Most of the patients in study were with shortness of breath. Mitral stenosis was the commonest echocardiographic diagnosis present in 22(56.41%) following Mitral regurgitation was 9(23.07%) of the patients, 25(64.1%) patients had secondary pulmonary hypertension. After surgical procedure for RHD-related disease, deaths reported by RHD-related valve repair 2 (5%). Conclusion: Valve replacement is usually necessary, and they have good outcomes even if they are operated with severe regurgitation or stenosis.