[Rheumatic activity and clinico-pathologic dissociation. Clinical and pathologic parameters in rheumatic heart...

We studied atrial appendages and valvular apparatus from patients undergoing cardiac surgery for rheumatic heart disease, looking for active histologic lesions. After reviewing 673 specimens (1980-1985) we studied two groups: 31 cases with Aschoff nodules or ill-differentiated histopathological lesions, and 31 cases, without tissular inflammatory abnormalities. In the former we found 8 cases with suspected clinical activity in a 3 months period before surgery, in the latter only 2 cases had similar findings. The Jones criteria are not useful for recognizing rheumatic activity among patients with chronic rheumatic heart disease, there is no clinical-histopathological correlations and it is possible that chronic inflammation occurs at the heart as an organ-limited condition.