Prevalence of Rheumatic Heart Disease Detected by Echocardiographic Screening

Epidemiologic studies of the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease have used clinical screening with echocardiographic confirmation of suspected cases. We hypothesized that echocardiographic screening of all surveyed children would show a significantly higher prevalence of rheumatic heart disease.

Randomly selected schoolchildren from 6 through 17 years of age in Cambodia and Mozambique were screened for rheumatic heart disease according to standard clinical and echocardiographic criteria.