Understanding Rheumatic Fever -- Diagnosis and Treatment

How Do I Find Out If I Have It?

To determine the presence of streptococcus bacteria, your doctor will do a throat culture.  This uncomfortable but painless procedure involves swabbing a sample of throat mucus for laboratory analysis.  It usually takes 24 hours to grow and analyze the culture.  Some doctors also use a rapid strep test that can give results in about five minutes, but it isn't as accurate as the culture.

Your doctor will also give you a complete examination, listening to your heart for evidence of heart valve malfunction -- which will create a heart sound called a heart "murmur" -- and looking for other telltale symptoms, such as arthritis in more than one joint and the small bony protuberances, or nodules, that often appear over the swollen joints.

What Are the Treatments?

Appropriate, often long-term, conventional treatment can greatly lessen the risk of heart disease and other health problems associated with rheumatic fever.  Alternative treatments serve as complements to conventional care -- helping to ease symptoms of the illness and strengthening the immune system to help avoid recurrent attacks.

Your doctor will prescribe bed rest and penicillin or other antibiotics to get rid of the streptococcal organisms.  To prevent a recurrence of the illness, you may be put on a long-term prescription of antibiotics.  For fever, inflammation, arthritic joint pain, and other symptoms, you may be given aspirin or an aspirin substitute, ibuprofen or naproxen, and perhaps a corticosteroid.  If you have developed rheumatic heart disease, it will also be important to take antibiotics at certain times, especially during procedures like dental procedures which may accidentally introduce bacteria into the blood, to prevent a reoccurrence of heart valve inflammation.  If inflammation to the heart is severe, surgery may eventually be necessary to repair damage to the heart valves to keep the heart from failing.