[Rheumatic activity and clinico-pathologic dissociation. Clinical and pathologic parameters in rheumatic heart disease].

We studied atrial appendages and valvular apparatus from patients undergoing cardiac surgery for rheumatic heart disease, looking for active histologic lesions. After reviewing 673 specimens (1980-1985) we studied two groups: 31 cases with Aschoff nodules or ill-differentiated histopathological lesions, and 31 cases, without tissular inflammatory abnormalities. In the former we found 8 cases with suspected clinical activity in a 3 months period before surgery, in the latter only 2 cases had similar findings. The Jones criteria are not useful for recognizing rheumatic activity among patients with chronic rheumatic heart disease, there is no clinical-histopathological correlations and it is possible that chronic inflammation occurs at the heart as an organ-limited condition.