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Health and medicine
Course: Health and medicine > Unit 3
Lesson 15: VasculitisWhat is Kawasaki disease?
Kawasaki disease (also known as mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome) is a type of vasculitis that affects medium arteries. Patients with Kawasaki disease can have symptoms like rashes on the palms of hands, soles of feet, in the eyes, and on the tongue (called strawberry tongue). Created by Ian Mannarino.
Want to join the conversation?
- Whom is Kawasaki disease named after?(2 votes)
- The disease is named after Tomisaku Kawasaki, a Japanese pediatrician who first described the illness in the medical literature in 1967.(3 votes)
- What's the difference between a pericardial effusion and a cardiac tamponade?(1 vote)
- A pericardial effusion is any amount of extra fluid in the pericardial cavity.
Cardiac tamponade is when that fluid is a large enough volume to impede the heart function. While wikipedia isn't perfect, it has a ultrasound video
you may find interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericardial_effusion(1 vote)
- Does this disease also cause the mucous areas of the mouth to crack or skin to shed?(1 vote)
- can you start aspirin and IVIG theraphy to 8 months old patient suffering from kawasaki?(1 vote)
- IVIg would absolutely be used, probably with a corticosteroid. Aspirin treatment in an 8 month old should be considered, but the decision would depend on clinical assessment, patient factors, and the protocol of the treating paediatric unit.(1 vote)
- Is kawasaki disease painful and fatal?(1 vote)
- It depends on where it spreads to. if it reaches a blood vessel that supplies a vital organ, yes it could be painful or fatal.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Kawasaki disease
is a type of vasculitis that affects medium blood vessels. It was first discovered in Asia by a doctor named Tomisaku Kawasaki. And since then, it's been noted to affect mostly children of an Asian descent. As I mentioned, it was
first discovered by a doctor by the name of Tomisaku
Kawasaki in January of 1961. With the first diagnosis, he actually had no clue what was going on. But he did note that patients
typically had a fever along with a body rash and rash elsewhere. The rash seemed to affect
the mouth, the eyes, and on the palms and the soles. He also discovered that
some rash was a body rash. When Dr. Kawasaki first saw this disease, he didn't know what it was. So, he diagnosed fever of unknown origin. This is a blanket term given
when a patient has a fever that is not found to have a diagnosis. However, after encountering
a lot of patients with rash in their mouth, red eyes, maybe on their body and
on their palms and soles, Dr. Kawasaki decided to
publish about this disease. And thus we have the name
Kawasaki disease today. Now, Dr. Kawasaki stated that since the symptoms were so clear cut, he felt that they were pretty close to a discovery of the cause. But unfortunately today,
we actually still don't understand what causes Kawasaki disease. And the geographic and genetic influences are still really unknown. Now as the years have gone on, Kawasaki disease has
also been given the name mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome. That's quite a very long description. But it actually really makes sense based off of the findings and symptoms. The word mucocutaneous
refers to mucous membranes. Mucous membranes are wet
surfaces such as the mouth. And cutaneous refers to skin. So for example, skin on your hands or on your feet or on your body. Another mucous membrane
affected is the eyes. Now, where does the word
lymph node come from? Well, commonly in this disease, you can see swelling of nodes in the neck. These are lymph nodes. Specifically, they're known
as cervical lymph nodes. Cervical means neck. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is a medium vessel vasculitis. A vasculitis is an
inflammation of blood vessels. And it's believed to be
caused by the immune system. Though why the immune
system decides to damage the blood vessels in this
disease is really not known. The diagnosis is essentially based off of the clinical symptoms that you see. You can see red eyes, which
is known as conjunctivitis. A more prominent redness of the mouth, this is oral erythema. You may see redness of the
palms and redness of the soles and you may also see a red body rash. So the common theme in
this is rash, red rash. So now if we see some
sort of rash or redness and we also see a fever more than 5 days and a child is less than 5 years old, you should be thinking
about Kawasaki disease. Now, this is actually a disease that's very important to diagnose early. The reason for that is you can see symptoms affecting the
heart if this disease continues for a longer period of time. Remember, Kawasaki disease
is a vessel disease. Inflammation of blood vessels. So if you see damage to
some of these blood vessels, you can get clots in the
blood vessels of the heart, which causes the heart to
not be able to contract. So maybe it can contract well up here. But down here, it's not
contracting as effectively. Remember, heart cells need blood. And if they are not getting their blood, they are going to die and
they can't contract anymore. This cell death of heart cells is called myocardial infarction,
myocardial infarction. This is also known as a heart attack. Along with myocardial infarction, you might have cell death
of the valvular muscles. These are known as the
papillary muscles of the heart. If you cause damage to these, you're not able to pump blood
effectively out of the heart because the valves are damaged
and not functioning properly. Something more severe
that might be seen is known as pericardial effusion. Pericardial effusion is a collection of blood outside of the heart. This is caused by blood vessel rupture. Blood pours out of the
heart because of a ruptured blood vessel and accumulates
around the heart. This is a very serious
issue and so it makes sense, if you see a kid with
fever who is less than 5 years old and has all these red rashes, you should be very serious about considering Kawasaki disease. Now, since we don't understand the cause behind Kawasaki disease, using a mnemonic may help
you remember the symptoms. I like to remember a kid on a motor cycle, a Kawasaki motorcycle driving really fast. When he drives really fast, he gets his heart rate
going really quickly. And he drives a motorcycle
using his feet and his hands. And so this may help you remember the rash on the hands and the feet as
well as the heart symptoms. Remember, it's linked to Kawasaki disease.