Heart failure in acute rheumatic fever

Heart failure in acute rheumatic fever

Heart failure in acute rheumatic fever is generally due to acute valvular regurgitations, mostly mitral regurgitation. Even though rheumatic fever causes pancarditis with involvement of pericardium, myocardium and endocardium, it is often the valvular involvement as part of the endocardial involvement which causes heart failure rather than myocardial failure. Hence heart failure without significant valvular involvement is unlikely to be due to acute rheumatic fever and is more likely to be due to some other form of myocarditis.