[A comparative study of two similar groups of 364 children treated for rheumatic fever according to identical protocols (1955--1961, 1965--1972) (author's transl)].

From 1955 through 1972, all children admitted to two after-care centers for rheumatic fever were examined by the same physicians with the same diagnostic criteria and treated according to the same rules. A comparaison between two groups of children who were examined ten years apart has confirmed the changes which took place in the course of rheumatic fever during this period. The incidence of recidives recorded at admission has dropped considerably. Multiple recidives, too, have grown rarer. The incidence of the forms with cardiopathy at admission has dropped. This is, for the most part, due to the reduction in the number of recidives. The severity of cardiopathies has abated, too, and this goes irrespective of the number of previous attacks. The results of treatment in children with cardiopathy are identical in both groups. Treatment methods have not changed from the beginning to the ending of the study; there is a good ground for thinking that the advances observed are due principally to the secondary prevention and related, therefore, to improvements in the health education level, which leads to a recidive prevention better done than in the past.