The Prevalence of Clinical and Subclinical Rheumatic Heart Disease (Rhd) Diagnosed by Colour Doppler Echocardiography Using World Heart Federation (Whf) Criteria in 5-15 Years Old School Going Children of a Northeastern Indian State (Manipur)

Abstract

BACKGROUNDRHD is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the underdeveloped world. The burden of RHD has been estimated variably depending on the method and tool of examination. Recent echocardiography-based studies, generally accepted as the best tools to detect RHD, had shown 10-fold increased prevalence of RHD compared to clinical examination albeit fear for overestimation of the disease. While studies using more stringent criteria of WHF 2012 are limited and no such study has been conducted in this part of the country, we felt it necessary to conduct such a study in this hilly state of India. MATERIALS AND METHODSThis is a community based cross sectional study in which each and every selected child aged 5-15 years from randomly selected schools of Manipur were examined physically and by 2D colour Doppler Echocardiography. The anthropometric parameters, clinical details and echocardiography findings were all recorded. Echocardiography loops were recorded for review by another cardiologist later. Analysis was done by using T test, descriptive statistics and with 95% confidence interval. All the analysis was done using STATA 13.0 (Stata Corp, USA).