Myocardial infarction due to rheumatoid arteritis. An antemortem diagnosis

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Abstract
IN 1836 Jean Bouillaud first called attention to the relationship of acute generalized febrile articular rheumatism to disease of the heart.1 In 1881, Charcot argued, "I have collected a considerable number of cases in which endocarditis has developed in chronic rheumatism without the disease ever having assumed an acute form."1 In 1876, Sir Alfred Garrod said that he had "never met with an instance in which I could trace the occurrence of pericarditis or endocarditis to rheumatoid arthritic disease, however acute the joint infection may have been and I am of the opinion that this absence of cardiac inflammation is one of the best tests for distinguishing this malady from genuine rheumatism."1 The consensus that heart disease was a manifestation of rheumatic fever and not of rheumatoid arthritis persisted until Baggenstoss and Rosenberg reported on the cardiac lesions at autopsy in 20 cases of infectious arthritis.2