Rheumatic Fever And Streptococcal Infection

Acute Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease is a concise, yet comprehensive, clinical resource highlighting must-know information on rheumatic heart disease and acute rheumatic fever from a global perspective. Covering the major issues dominating the field, this practical resource presents sufficient detail for a deep and thorough understanding of the latest treatment options, potential complications, and disease management strategies to improve patient outcomes. Divided into four distinct sections for ease of navigation: Acute Rheumatic Fever, Rheumatic Heart Disease, Population-Based Strategies for Disease Control, and Acute and Emergency Presentations. International editors and chapter authors ensure a truly global perspective. Covers all clinical aspects, including epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical features, diagnosis, management, and treatment. Includes key topics on population-based measures for disease control for effective primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Consolidates today’s available information and guidance into a single, convenient resource.

This plan addresses the need to improve our ability to identify infectious disease threats and respond to them effectively by improving the public health infrastructure at the local, state and federal levels. The goals of the plan are surveillance (detect, promptly investigate, and monitor emerging pathogens, the diseases they cause, and the factors influencing their emergence); applied research (integrate laboratory science and epidemiology to optimize public health practice); prevention and control (enhance communication of public health information about emerging diseases and ensure prompt implementation of prevention strategies); and infrastructure (strengthen local, state, and federal public health infrastructures to support surveillance and implement prevention and control programs).

This is a historical review of the development of our knowledge of the clinical picture, etiology, pathogenesis, and prevention of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease over the past four centuries. Benedict Massell examines the major contributions of both clinicians and investigators to our current understanding of rheumatic fever as a separate disease form. Elucidating many facts about this dread disease, Massell examines the frequent epidemics in training camps during World War II, discusses our growing understanding of the pathogenesis and mechanisms by which streptococcal infections cause the disease, and shows the important progress made in prevention through the use of penicillin and other antibiotics. He includes a discussion of the many problems which can hinder our understanding and control of this disease, as well as recent promising developments in the clarification of the molecular structure of the streptococcal protein and the possible application of this information to the development of a safe and effective vaccine for the prevention of streptococcal infection.