Cardiac involvement in spondylarthropathies

Cardiac involvement is a real manifestation of spondylarthropathies and include specially aortic regurgitation and conduction troubles. We present a prospective open study of fifty patients with spondylarthropathy (responded to Amor criteria) in order to evaluate the frequency of cardiac involvement, to see its type and if we can evaluate a group of patients able to this complication. We have included forty-four men and six women with a mean age of 38 years. The disease evolve for 8.8 years in mean. Ag HLA B27 was present in 70% of the cases. Thirty patients have ankylosing spondylitis, although twenty have a secondary spondylarthropathy: psoriasic rheumatism (12 cases), inflammatory bowel disease: Crohn's disease (4 cases), RCH (three cases) and Fiessenger le Roy-Reiter syndrome in one case. All the patients have had a cardiac check up with research of clinical cardiac manifestation, thoracic chest, trans-thoracic echographi, Halter rhythmic done in five cases only. Cardiac involvement is found in five cases (10%): aortic regurgitation in 3 cases (6%) and mitral regurgitation in 2 cases (4%). These valvular disease are well tolerated.