Cardiac Changes in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Incidence of myocardial infarction in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

“…Clinical observation suggests that patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) do not suffer myocardial infarction (MI) as frequently as does the general population, but data to support this impression are lacking. MI appears as a relatively infrequent postmortem finding in published autopsy series of patients with RA ( Table 1) (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18), but these studies generally do not supply control populations for comparison. In this report we demonstrate a reduction in the frequency of MI in a sample of patients with RA as compared to matched control patients with other diseases, and we consider some possible explanations.…”

Rheumatoid pericarditis with cardiac failure treated by pericardiectomy.

“…Even acute pericarditis may be undetected (Graef et al, 1949). These findings have been supported by the low incidence of clinically detectable pericarditis in patients with rheumatoid disease (Rogen, 1947;Fischmann and Gwynne, 1948;Rosenberg et al, 1950;Egelius et al, 1955;Cathcart and Spodick, 1962;Lebowitz, 1963). Acute rheumatoid pericarditis is not commonly reported in adults; Cathcart and Spodick (1962) describe 5 in a series of 254 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, while in most clinical series no examples of pericarditis occur.…”

“…Adhesive, obliterative, or fibrinous pericarditis has been the type most commonly described in necropsy series (Fingerman and Andrus, 1943;Young and Schwedel, 1944;Graef, Hickey, and Altmann, 1949;Bywaters, 1950;Sokoloff, 1953;Levin et al, 1955;Sinclair and Cruickshank, 1956;Cruickshank, 1958;Goehrs, Baggenstoss, and Slocumb, 1960;Cathcart and Spodick, 1962;Lebowitz, 1963). The reported incidence has varied widely, between 11 per cent (Fingerman and Andrus, 1943) and 50 per cent (Young and Schwedel, 1944;Graef et al, 1949;Egelius et al, 1955).…”

Rheumatoid arthritis: extra-articular manifestations.

“…Very good pathological evidence must therefore be found at necropsy before the diagnosis of rheumatoid heart disease is justified. Epidemiological studies of large numbers of living patients with rheumatoid arthritis by Short et al (1957, p. 283), Egelius et al (1955), and in our unit (Gibberd, 1965) have usually failed to show an increased prevalence of clinically detectable cardiac disease.…”