Abstract
Kawasaki disease occurs predominantly in children younger than 5 years of age. The disease is a febrile, multisystem illness of importance because of the risk of development of coronary artery abnormalities. Kawasaki disease is a generalized systemic vasculitis involving small to medium blood vessels throughout the body. Within several days of the onset of fever (persisting for at least 5 days), other characteristic features of the illness usually appear, including conjunctival infection without exudates; erythematous mouth and pharynx, strawberry tongue, and red, cracked lips; a polymorphous, generalized, erythematous rash; erythematous palms and soles; a unilateral cervical lymph node enlarged to at least 1.5 cm in diameter. Treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin and high-dose acetyl salicylic acid remains the primary management strategy. We report a case of acute Kawasaki disease in a 12-year-old girl who could not be given intravenous immunoglobulin in the first 10 days of the illness because of social security problems. Although she was given high-dose aspirin and steroids in the acute phase, she was successfully treated with intravenous immunoglobulin in the subacute phase
Keywords: Kawasaki diseasemucocutaneous lymph node syndrome, intravenous immunoglobulin
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Copyright and license
Copyright © 2009 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.