Screening for the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease among school children in Egypt

In low-income nations, Rheumatic valvular heart disease remains a major cause of morbidity and premature deaths. Accurate prevalence data in Egypt are still lacking yet highly desirable to facilitate health care planning.

An cluster sample of school children in eastern Egyptian Governorates was examined clinically and echocardiographically (using abbreviated protocol) for detection of rheumatic valvular heart disease based on 2012 World Heart Federation criteria (the Doppler and the morphological criteria) for diagnosis. According to echocardiography interpretation, participants were categorized as having definite rheumatic heart disease (RHD), borderline RHD or no RHD.

A total of 1680 students aged between 6 and 18 years were screened, 119 echocardiographic studies were non-interpretable; so, a total of 1560 studies were evaluated. From the total screened students, 1560 studies were adequate and interpretable according to the criteria specified in the methods section. This revealed a prevalence of 2.3% of the sample with RHD without adding the equivocal cases. The most prevalent lesion as detected by echocardiography was mitral regurgitation (29% of definite RHD cases).

Rheumatic valvular heart disease remains prevalent in Egypt and the findings of this study should influence early detection, primary and secondary prevention, and adequate future national health plans.