scholarly journals Case Ascertainment on Australian Registers for Acute Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (15) ◽  
pp. 5505
Author(s):  
Treasure Agenson ◽  
Judith M. Katzenellenbogen ◽  
Rebecca Seth ◽  
Karen Dempsey ◽  
Mellise Anderson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Disease ◽  
Rheumatic Fever ◽  
Rheumatic Heart Disease ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Acute Rheumatic Fever ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Hospital Data ◽  
Indigenous Status ◽  
Case Ascertainment ◽  
Rheumatic Heart

In Australia, disease registers for acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) were previously established to facilitate disease surveillance and control, yet little is known about the extent of case-ascertainment. We compared ARF/RHD case ascertainment based on Australian ARF/RHD register records with administrative hospital data from the Northern Territory (NT), South Australia (SA), Queensland (QLD) and Western Australia (WA) for cases 3–59 years of age. Agreement across data sources was compared for persons with an ARF episode or first-ever RHD diagnosis. ARF/RHD registers from the different jurisdictions were missing 26% of Indigenous hospitalised ARF/RHD cases overall (ranging 17–40% by jurisdiction) and 10% of non-Indigenous hospitalised ARF/RHD cases (3–28%). The proportion of hospitalised RHD cases (36%) was half the proportion of hospitalised ARF cases (70%) notified to the ARF/RHD registers. The registers were found to capture few RHD cases in metropolitan areas (SA Metro: 13%, QLD Metro: 35%, WA Metro: 14%). Indigenous status, older age, comorbidities, drug/alcohol abuse and disease severity were predictors of cases appearing in the hospital data only (p < 0.05); sex was not a determinant. This analysis confirms that there are biases associated with the epidemiological analysis of single sources of case ascertainment for ARF/RHD using Australian data.

Acute rheumatic fever in the paediatric population: a descriptive study in the Malaysian state of Sabah

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Farul R Patel ◽  
Jason Wy Tan ◽  
Siva Rao
Keyword(s):  
Heart Disease ◽  
Rheumatic Fever ◽  
Rheumatic Heart Disease ◽  
Acute Rheumatic Fever ◽  
Paediatric Population ◽  
Disease Registry ◽  
Male Patients ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Time Of Presentation ◽  
Rheumatic Heart

Abstract Introduction: Rheumatic heart disease is among the leading causes of acquired valvular heart disease in the developing world. However, there is no data available for rheumatic heart disease in the paediatric population of Sabah. This study collected data for acute rheumatic fever admissions among the paediatric population in Sabah over a period of 3 years. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study. All records for admissions to paediatric wards in Sabah for acute rheumatic fever from January 2016 to December 2018 were collected. The patient records were then traced and required information were collected. Results: A total of 52 cases of acute rheumatic fever were admitted. It was observed that the incidence of acute rheumatic fever was 74.4 per 100,000 paediatric admissions. Patients from the West Coast Division made up most of the admissions (n = 24, 46.2%). Male patients (n = 35, 67.3%) of the indigenous Kadazan-Dusun ethnicity (n = 21, 40.4%) were most commonly encountered. The mean age at time of presentation was 9.58 years. Most cases admitted (n = 38, 73.1%) were categorised as Priority 1 (severe rheumatic heart disease). Conclusion: Most patients who were admitted had symptoms of heart failure and were diagnosed with severe rheumatic heart disease. Although this disease is preventable, the incidence in Sabah remains high. This study was limited as we only looked at patients who were admitted and we foresee the real incidence to be higher. Hence, there is an urgent need for a rheumatic heart disease registry in Malaysia to gather more data for prevention and early intervention.

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