Mid-term outcome of patients with Kawasaki disease, single-centre experience

Background - More and more children, who suffered from Kawasaki disease in childhood, reach today adulthood. The future perspectives of these patients are not yet well defined, therefore, we wanted to determine mid-term outcome of our Kawasaki patients, Methodology - All patients with the diagnosis of Kawasaki disease were selected from the database of paediatric and congenital cardiology of our hospital. The records were reviewed for disease characteristics and follow-up data. Descriptive statistics were performed. Results - Thirty-five patients were included (18 boys, median age at diagnosis 1.9 years, range from 0.4 to 12.2 years). In 94% of the cases, the left coronary artery was affected, whereas in 58% the right coronary artery was involved in the disease process. In three patients the left ventricular ejection fraction worsened below 50%. One patient underwent a balloon dilatation and stenting of a coronary artery, and in another patient inotropic support was needed. Aspirin was given in all, sandoglobulin in thirty patients; in 10% of the cases corticosteroids were administered. The active disease process terminated after a median of 0.5 months, ranging from 0.1 to 2.0 months. The patient cohort was followed for a median of 4 years (range from 0.1 to 17.7 years). During this follow-up time, no reoccurrences, no significant arrhythmias, and no deaths occurred. In all patients, the left ventricular ejection fraction remained normal or normalized. However, at the latest follow-up, 43% was still treated with a low dose of aspirin. Conclusions - The mid-term outcome of patients who suffered from Kawasaki disease during childhood is excellent. However, almost half of them were treated with oral aspirin during follow-up.