Rheumatic Heart Disease: Pathogenesis, Morphology, Clinical features
Rheumatic fever (RF) is an acute, immunologically mediated, multisystem inflammatory disease that occurs a few weeks after an episode of group A streptococcal pharyngitis.
Acute RF typically appears 10 days to 6 weeks after an episode of pharyngitis caused by group A streptococci in about 3% of infected patient. It occurs most often in children between ages 5 and 15.