[Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease].

Rheumatic heart disease, the sequel of acute rheumatic fever, is a very common cause of cardiovascular mortality and morbidity all over the world, and is the predominant indication for cardiac surgery in the industrialized countries. Diagnosis of rheumatic chronic carditis may sometimes be difficult because valvular regurgitation may not always be detected by routine clinical auscultation. A recent report from the World Health Organization Expert Committee recognizes the usefulness of echocardiography Doppler in providing supporting evidence for diagnosis of rheumatic carditis in the presence of equivocally pathological murmur, and recommends that patients with subclinical carditis should be managed as rheumatic heart disease until proven otherwise, because the disease still represents a major health problem. The aim of this review is to give an update on the disease by underlining changes made by the World Health Organization on disease diagnosis and patient management.