Discussion
Rheumatic heart disease (81%) was the most common heart
disease complicating pregnancy in this audit. This finding is not
unexpected, because it is well known that rheumatic fever is still
a common problem in poorly resourced countries. Bhatla et al.
and Abdel-Hady et al. reported similar findings in New Delhi,
India and Egypt, respectively.7,8 This is in contrast to affluent
societies in which congenital heart lesions are the dominant
anatomical lesions in patients presenting with cardiac disease
in pregnancy.2,9