The Nutritional State of Children with Chronic Rheumatic Heart

Gray Hill (1933) stated that while the child's physical development may be arrested by severe rheumatic heart disease, most patients admitted to hospital in the active state of rheumatism or chorea are little below normal height and weight, and not uncommonly they are tall and well grown. With rest in bed the weight approached normal within a few months. The long-term effect on nutrition is by no means so clear. The problem is made more difficult because it is generally agreed that rheumatic heart disease is more common in children from poor homes (Swift, quoted from Nelson's "Loose Leaf Medicine"; Ministry of Health Report, 1927; Miller, 1928; Campbell and Warner, 1930; Glover, 1934; Medical Research Council Report, No. 114, 1927). Vining (1928) found that 75 per cent. of his rheumatic cases were under weight as compared with fifty-nine of one hundred elementary school children with a history of good health.