A New Orleans-born heart specialist reported today damage to the heart muscle is a common thing in children who have the wasting disease of muscular dystrophy.
DrJoseph K. Perloff told fellows of the American College "of Cardiology he found hidden heart disease in 65 per cent
♦ o£ a group of children with muscular dystrophy, and heart involvement was likely in 19 per cent more.
I The New Orleanian, who I now is director of the Cardiac Diagnostic Laboratory of Georgetown University in Washington, D. C, delivered one of the first scientific papers at ACC's four-day, 13th annual convention at the Roosevelt Hotel.
NEARLY 2,000 physicians and surgeons from all over the world are attending sessions of a widely-varied scientific program planned by Dr. George E. Burch, professor and chairman of the Department of Medicine at Tulane University Medical School.
Dr. Allan M. Goldman, chief of medicine at Touro Infirmary, is general convention chairman.
The Louisiana Heart Asso-I eiation held a preconvention | scientific meeting yesterday.
DR. PERLOFF, who re-
Islana State university Medi-caTEcBobT, lold Uar-faeartrspgr "cialists he had studied 26 victims of the progressive type of childhood dystrophy and a somewhat older group of 10 with another form of the disease.
He said it has been known for some time the heart can be involved in muscular dystrophy, but there has been little information on the incidence of dystrophic heart disease or the natural history of the patient with cardiac involvement. he said, operates a large and active muscular dystrophy clinic. All clinic patients found by neurological examination to suffer from the disease are referred to his cardiology laboratory for study.
The individual studies covered periods ranging from a few weeks to four years, he said. None of the patients had cardiac symptoms when first seen.
ACTUAL WASTING of the
heart muscle developed in four of the patients, "one of whom over four years developed heart failure, complete heart block and death," he said.
Dr. Perloff said the degree of incapacitation from muscular dystrophy itself ranged from mild to severe among his 36 patients.
Patients with the childhood type of muscular dystrophy all were male, averaged 12 years old, and had had the disease for an average of eight years.
Those with the other type— which attacks chiefly the ligaments of the shoulder and thigh—included six males and four females averaging 20 years of age, who had suffered from the disease for an average of 12 years.
THE 65 PER CENT found to have hidden heart disease were those with the childhood type. Three of the 10 patients with the other type of dystrophy also had heart disease, and heart involvement was possible in another three, he said.
Dr. Perloff said the findings indicate the heart muscle may be involved in both types of muscular dystrophy, but chiefly in the childhood type.
He said blood studies of the patients with heart involvement showed abnormalities in the enzymes carried in the blood were related to the dystrophy, but bore no relation
