Objectives: To determine whether coronary artery lesions (ectasia and aneurysm) are commonly observed on the initial echocardiogram of patients with acute Kawasaki syndrome, whether coronary artery ectasia and/or aneurysms occur more frequently in patients with incomplete Kawasaki syndrome than in those patients with complete findings, and whether earlier diagnosis and treatment of Kawasaki syndrome are associated with less frequent occurrence of coronary artery ectasia and/or aneurysm.
Design: A retrospective medical record review.
Setting: A tertiary care pediatric hospital.
Participants: One hundred patients treated for Kawasaki syndrome between July 1, 1998, and June 30, 2003, who were identified by a medical record search.
Main outcome measure: Prevalence of coronary artery lesions (ectasia and aneurysm) on the initial and subsequent echocardiograms.
Results: Forty-four percent of patients had a coronary artery lesion (31% with ectasia, 13% with aneurysm) on the initial echocardiogram. Patients with incomplete Kawasaki syndrome were treated significantly later (median, 10 days) and had a significantly higher occurrence of coronary artery aneurysms over the course of their illness (37%) than those with complete Kawasaki syndrome, who were treated at a median of 7 days (P<.001) and had a 12% aneurysm occurrence (P = .009). Patients treated by day 7 of illness had a less frequent occurrence of aneurysm (6%) compared with those patients treated between days 8 and 10 of illness (27%) (P = .03).
Conclusions: Coronary artery lesions are frequently detected on the initial echocardiogram of children with Kawasaki syndrome. If future studies show ectasia to have a relatively high degree of specificity for Kawasaki syndrome, the initial echocardiography may be a useful adjunctive diagnostic test.