Clinical Overview of Kawasaki Disease

Key points

Kawasaki Disease (KD) is characterized by a fever plus one or more other symptoms commonly associated with KD. Healthcare providers can report KD to CDC using an electronic case reporting form. CDC continues research and analysis to better understand KD.

Symptoms include fever, red eyes, cracked lips & red tongue, swollen cervical lymph nodes, rash, swollen hands & feet.

Overview

For epidemiologic surveillance, CDC defines a case of Kawasaki Disease (KD) as illness in a patient with fever that lasts 5 or more days (or fever until the intravenous immunoglobulin is given, if given before the fifth day of fever), and having at least 4 of the following 5 clinical signs:

  • Rash
  • Swelling and redness of their hands and feet
  • Cervical lymphadenopathy (at least 15 cm in diameter)
  • Bilateral conjunctival injection
  • Oral mucosal changes

Patients whose illness does not meet the above KD case definition but have fever and coronary artery abnormalities are classified as having atypical or incomplete KD.

The CDC standardized KD case report form is available as a PDF document for healthcare workers to submit a report. If you are a healthcare professional and wish to submit a report, you can either print the form and fill it out by hand or fill it out electronically and print it out. The completed form should be sent to the mailing address provided on the form or faxed to 404-471-8768.

What CDC is doing

Kawasaki disease was first described in 1967 in Japan by Tomisaku Kawasaki. The first cases outside of Japan were reported in 1976 in Hawaii. CDC has operated a KD surveillance system since 1976 and uses several data sources to track and better understand KD in the United States.

CDC analyzes large hospital discharge databases in the United States to learn more about the number of cases of KD and what symptoms children are having. Because most children with KD are hospitalized, the hospitalization rate is a good estimate of how often KD is being diagnosed.

CDC also has a voluntary KD reporting system for health care providers and health authorities to let CDC know when and where they are seeing cases. This system provides CDC with information like case symptoms and whether the child is experiencing serious complications.

CDC continues to conduct special studies to further describe how often KD is diagnosed and which symptoms are most common.

Resources

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Content Source:
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID); About Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology