Characteristics of rheumatic fever in children and adolescents with the disease

Abstract

This is a descriptive study whose objectives were: to characterize socio demographic, clinical and therapeutic aspects of children and ado­lescents with rheumatic fever and to describe the experiences of these subjects with the disease as well its treatment. It was developed at a Unified National Health System hospital, of reference. In fact, a tertiary care hospital. The sample was constituted of 20 subjects interned with rheumatic fever diagnosis in the years 2004 and 2005. For the data collection it was used 20 medical records and semi-structured interviews applied to (6) six subjects intentionally chosen, including their custodial parents. There is, therefore, the need for efforts of the assistential team to detect and to treat precociously, contributing to the best prognostic and to the quality of life improvement of those attacked by this disease.