Purpose of review: This review provides the summary of the appropriate use of these modalities when caring for patients with Kawasaki disease at diagnosis and for long-term management.
Recent findings: Kawasaki disease is an inflammatory syndrome of unknown etiology that can result in coronary artery dilations or aneurysms if left untreated in 25% of the patients and 3-5% in treated patients. In addition to coronary artery aneurysms, patients can have ventricular dysfunction, valvular regurgitation, aortic root dilation, and pericardial effusion due to inflammation of the myocardium. Noninvasive imaging modalities are important to these assessments. Echocardiography is the first-line noninvasive evaluation of coronaries and function. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging is useful for functional assessment in long-term follow-up. Distal coronaries, thromboses, and stenoses are best evaluated by cardiac computed tomography. Future research should demonstrate the effectiveness of advanced functional imaging in patients with Kawasaki disease and decreased radiation from cardiac computed tomography.
Keywords: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging; Computer tomography; Coronary imaging; Echocardiography; Function assessment; Kawasaki disease.
© 2022. This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.