Definition of "carditis" [car•di•tis]

• Inflammation of the muscle tissue of the heart. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "What are the long-term effects of carditis from rheumatic fever?"
• "The diseases caused by Group A Streptococcus can become rheumatic fever, a disease that attacks the heart and leads to carditis, an inflammation of the heart, and congestive heart failure over a period of months and years."
• "Rheumatism in childhood is not manifested by acute and short-lived attacks of great severity so much as by a long-continued succession of symptoms of a subacute nature, a transient arthritis, perhaps, succeeding an attack of sore throat with torticollis, to be followed by carditis, to be followed again by another attack of tonsillitis."