Rheumatic Heart Disease — An Iceberg in Tropical Waters

Rheumatic heart disease ranks as one of the most serious cardiovascular scourges of the past century.  As a result of improvements in living conditions and the introduction of penicillin, the disease was almost eradicated in the developed world by the 1980s. However, it remains a force to be reckoned with in the developing world, as demonstrated by an assessment from the 2015 Global Burden of Disease study (GBD 2015), painstakingly performed by Watkins and colleagues and reported in this issue of the Journal.