Epidemiology of rheumatic and congenital heart diseases in school children.

A stratified random sample of 10,263 school-going children in the age group of 6-16 years from government and private schools were screened for the prevalence of rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart diseases and congenital heart diseases. Fourteen children were found to have rheumatic heart disease with valvular lesions either single or in combination eg, pure mitral stenosis (6 cases), mitral regurgitation (4 cases), combined mitral stenosis and mitral regurgitation (3 cases) and aortic and mitral regurgitation (one case). Eight children had congenital heart diseases in the form of ventricular septal defect (3 cases), atrial septal defect (2 cases), patent ductus arteriosus (2 cases) and congenital bicuspid aortic valve (one case) while none had active rheumatic fever.