Patients with rheumatoid arthritis who develop cardiac symptoms should be carefully assessed for surgically treatable involvement of the pericardium or heart valves.
Alerts clinicians to assess RA patients with cardiac symptoms for operable valvular/pericardial disease; extends sparse cases but leaves open generalizability.
Rheumatoid aortic valve disease is uncommon. and there are few reports of valve replacement in this condition. Aortic valve replacement and partial pericardiectomy was performed in a patient with acute rheumatoid aortitis and aortic incompetence. Previous reports suggest that any patient with rheumatoid arthritis who develops cardiac symptoms should be carefully assessed for surgically treatable involvement of the pericardium or heart valves.
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Devlin et al. (1978) studied this question.
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