Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of Kawasaki disease in children

ABSTRACT

Background:Kawasaki is acute fever disease with systematic vein infection which often seen in children under 5 years old. Objectives:Describe the clinical characteristics and laboratory, echocardiography data in children with Kawasaki between early diagnosed group and late one. Subjects and method: A descriptive, prospective study was carried out on 77 Kawasaki disease patients were selected, including 50 patients were diagnosed before day 10 of illness (group 1) and 27 patients were diagnosed on or after day 10 (group 2) in the National Pediatrics hospital from June 2004 to June 2006. Results:The mean was 13.4 months. Age under 12 months was 61 %. Male/female ratio was 1.7 1. Fever, red lips, red eyes, skin rash, extremities edema and cervical lymphadenopathy occurred in the first week. The inflammatory response was strong (CRP 83.6 mg/I, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) after an hour 79.1 mm. WBC 27800/ mm3). There were no differences between patients in the group 1 and group 2 in age, gender, time to the first medical visit, C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration, white blood cell count or erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Patients in the group 1 had significantly close clustering of symptoms onset in the first few days of illness, but patients in the group 2 had onset of symptoms scattered over 4 days. A platelet count of over 500.000/mm3 occurred more often in the group 2 (60%) than the group 1 (31.3%). Coronary involvement was observed in 23 patients (29.8%) including 17 patients who had coronary dilation and 6 patients with coronary aneurysm. Conclusion:Coronary artery abnormalities in the group 2 (48.1%) occurred significantly more than the group 1 (20%).