Kawasaki disease: review of 21 cases

Purpose: Kawasaki disease is common in children and is an acute systemic vasculitis affecting coronary arteries. Kawasaki disease has multisystemic nature with a variety of presenting symptoms. Without treatment 20-25% of Kawasaki disease patients develop coronary artery aneurysms. Our goal is to summarize the clinical data of patients treated with Kawasaki disease at our clinics. Material and Methods: Clinical features, laboratory findings, diagnosis and treatment of 21 patients with Kawasaki disease hospitalized at Turkish Ministry of Health Okmeydani Training and Research Hospital, Clinic of Pediatrics during January 2009 to January 2015 were retrospectively evaluated. Results: The patients were between 9 and 67 months old (median 27.52+/- 18.78), 71.4% (n: 15) were male. The duration of disease before diagnosis was 7.1+/-3.48 days, median 6 days. All patients had fever. The most common clinical features were oral cavity changes 95.2% (n: 20), rash 85.7% (n: 18), conjunctival injection 71.4% (n: 15), extremity changes 61,9% (n: 13), cervical lymphadenopathy 57.1% (n: 12). We also observed sterile pyuria in 33.3%, desquamation of perianal area 28.6 %, aseptic meningitis in 9.5%, hydrops of the gallblader 4.8%. 19.1% patients had incomplete Kawasaki disease. 6 patients, 28.5% had coronary artery abnormalities. Intravenous immunglobulin treatment failure was observed in 9.5% of patients, one of them was diagnosed as macrophage activation syndrome. Conclusion: Kawasaki disease has difficulty in diagnosis because of having broad spectrum of presenting symptoms. Early diagnosis and treatment is very important in preventing coronary artery abnormalities.