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Rheumatic Heart Disease Has Almost Disappeared From The Industrialized World

In the early twentieth century, if you were unfortunate enough to be struck down with rheumatic fever, the chances of your surviving the condition were extremely thin. In fact, if you were aged between five and twenty years of age and were living in the United States, you would more than likely not survive the disease. However, because of a lot of effort having gone into combating rheumatic diseases, today rheumatic heart disease is almost never encountered in the more industrialized countries of the world and if detected, it is easily diagnosed and treated.

Heart Valve Disease

Still, according to estimates, it is believed that as many as seventy-nine percent of people that have heart valve disease will also be affected by rheumatic heart disease, especially if they happen to be adults living in the United States, while the remaining twenty-one percent of people with rheumatic heart disease may develop the condition because of having used cocaine, amphetamines as well as methamphetamines and even drugs such as Ecstasy.

Also, a person having a complication in their rheumatoid fever condition would also risk developing rheumatic heart disease and it is also believed that chronic rheumatic heart disease cases are found in as many as between five and thirty million children throughout the world and also in the younger adults who are mainly living in third world and underdeveloped countries in the world.

If you want to lessen the risk of developing rheumatic heart disease, you need to prevent rheumatic fever from affecting you and thus you should consider using anti-inflammatory medications including corticosteroids and also aspirin that can help combat rheumatoid fever. Furthermore, it has been estimated by the National Institute of Health that rheumatic heart disease may develop in an estimated three percent of those who are living in the United States and who also have strep throat infections which has gone untreated.

Nevertheless, it is possible to prevent the onset of rheumatic heart disease by using proper strep throat treatments; though of course some of the young people living in different parts of the world may not have access to proper health care and thus may have difficulty in keeping their heart valves in good condition and so, will fall prey to rheumatic heart disease because of lack of proper health care facilities. Unfortunately, such patients may have no option but to suffer the disease in silence and thus live a life of lower quality than those who can afford proper treatment.

Still, to lower the risk of developing rheumatic heart disease, you need to make simple changes to lifestyle such as quitting smoking, eating proper as well as healthy and also nutritious food, while also keeping the body weight in check and ensuring taking regular exercises – all of which will keep you in good health.