Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Pediatrics

Background:Juvenile Idiopathic arthritis (JIA)is a heterogeneous group of chronic arthritis diseases in childhood. It is the most common arthropathy of childhood. Itcan induce myocardial affection by several mechanisms such as chronic inflammation which leads to endothelial damage, fibrous scarring of the heart muscle and cardio toxic therapies used. The aim of this study was to detect cardiac involvement with concern to study the systolic and diastolic function of left and right ventricles in a group of children with JIA. Patients and Methods: This study was designed as a cross-sectional study on 60 patients and 60 controls; which were age and sex matched .Every patient and control underwent full history and examination, and echo including conventional, tissue Doppler and speckle tracking for assessment of the myocardial function. Results :This study showed that LVEDV was statistically significant at the 0.01 level such with many variables such as age , height , weight , basal surface area and duration of the disease. Moreover, early left and right ventricular diastolic dysfunction in patients with JIA and this dysfunction correlated significantly with the activity score (DAS28) (R= -0.7p < 0.01)

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