What is Kawasaki Disease?

Kawasaki disease comes under the category of rare childhood diseases. It is an offshoot of a disease called vasculitis.

What happens during Kawasaki disease is that the walls of the person’s blood vessels will get inflamed. This disease is known to affect any type of blood vessel that is present in the body, and it will include veins, capillaries and arteries.

In most cases, Kawasaki is known to affect the coronary arteries, and in doing so it will affect the flow of the oxygen-rich blood to the heart. Due to this, children suffering from Kawasaki disease might be susceptible to heart problems.

What causes the disease?

The exact cause of this disease isn’t known till date. The body responds to various viruses and infections and when this response gets combined with certain genetic factors, it might cause for the disease. In spite of this probable conclusion, they haven’t been able to find a specific infection or virus that has been found and the role of genetics hasn’t been pinpointed as yet.

Is it contagious?

The disease isn’t known to pass on from one child to another. Your child will not be at a greater risk of the disease if he/she interacts with a child suffering from Kawasaki. Moreover, if your child is already affected, he cannot pass it on to another child.

Who is susceptible?

This disease is known to affect children coming from all ages, races or genders. It generally is known to affect children who can draw their traces to the Asian and Pacific Island descent. This disease is more likely to affect males and this is truer in the case of children below the age of 5.

What are the Signs and Symptoms?

One of the major signs that will show up during the early phase of Kawasaki disease is an acute fever. The fever will last for longer than 5 days and might even persist after you’ve undertaken standard childhood medicines to combat fever.

Other signs would include –

• A rash that shows up on the mid-section of the body or in the genital area
• Lymph nodes in the neck which get swollen
• Cracked lips and a swelling on the tongue
• Swollen palms of the hand
• Reddened eyes

During the acute phase (early phase), the child might even get highly irritable and will complain of a sore throat, diarrhea, stomach pain and joint pain.

Long Term Care

If the disease has affected the coronary arteries of your child, it will put him/her at a severe risk of heart problems. A pediatric cardiologist should be able to help you out in such cases and provide for the right kind of long term treatment so that your child doesn’t suffer from too many problems in the near and far future.

Medications and Treatments

When Kawasaki disease affects the coronary arteries, it will cause the arteries to expand and twist. If this ends up continuing then the doctor will prescribe anti-coagulants which prevent the formation of blood clots in the affected coronary arteries.

Healing might take up to around 18 months after the patient has gone through the acute phase.  The anticoagulants will usually be stopped after the coronary arteries end up healing.

In some rare cases, the child might require a cardiac catheterization, which is a procedure used for the diagnosing and treatment of heart conditions. In this case, a flexible tube (catheter) will be put into a blood vessel and threaded to the patient’s heart thereon. The doctors will now use the catheter to perform further diagnostic tests and treatments that the heart requires to undergo.