Why should rheumatic fever be diagnosed early and treated early?
As mentioned above, rheumatic fever can affect the joints, the heart, the brain and the skin. Of these, all the effects except those on the heart resolve spontaneously. Once the heart valves are damaged, they are damaged for the rest of the patient’s life. What is even worse is the fact that the damaged valves continue to have a bad effect on the heart and the lung circulation, and so the patient becomes progressively more and more sick with time. If rheumatic fever is diagnosed early and the treatment started immediately, the degree of heart damage can be prevented or controlled. What are the precautions that the patient needs to take once a diagnosis of rheumatic fever is made? As the patients are genetically prone, rheumatic fever can attack the same patient repeatedly. When this happens, the risk of the heart getting affected or if already damaged, the risk of worsening of the damage is high. So once a patient has been convincingly diagnosed to have rheumatic fever, he or she needs
