Medical Dictionary
rheumatic fever
- a subacute febrile syndrome occurring after group A β-hemolytic streptococcal infection (usually pharyngitis) and mediated by an immune response to the organism; most often seen in children and young adults; features include fever, myocarditis (causing tachycardia and sometimes acute cardiac failure), endocarditis (with valvular incompetence, followed after healing by scarring), and migratory polyarthritis; less often, subcutaneous nodules, erythema marginatum, and Sydenham chorea; relapses can occur after reinfection with streptococci. See: Jones criteria, under criterion
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Stedman’s Medical Dictionary 28th Edition, Copyright© 2006_Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. All rights reserved.
