Key result
Kawasaki disease coronary aneurysms linked to ~10-point lower long-term pediatric quality of life scores.
Why the study?
The impact of coronary artery aneurysms caused by Kawasaki disease on long-term health-related quality of life in children has not been well documented.
Does Kawasaki disease-related coronary artery aneurysm impair long-term health-related quality of life in children compared to other childhood hospitalizations like pneumonia or arterio-arterial fistula?
Case-Control (n=164)
No
Does Kawasaki disease-related coronary artery aneurysm impair long-term health-related quality of life in children compared to other childhood hospitalizations like pneumonia or arterio-arterial fistula?
Mean Difference: -9.51 (95% CI -16.98–-2.02)
p-value: p=0.014
Children who develop giant coronary artery aneurysms following Kawasaki disease experience significantly worse long-term health-related quality of life compared to those with smaller aneurysms or other childhood illnesses, highlighting a need for routine psychosocial screening.
Small/medium KD aneurysms associated with lower long-term HRQoL; hypothesis-generating and requires prospective confirmation before screening changes.
Background: The impact of coronary artery aneurysms (CAAs) caused by Kawasaki disease (KD) on long-term health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children has not been well documented. Methods: This study investigated long-term HRQOL in a large sample of children diagnosed with KD-related CAAs. A case-control, retrospective study included 66 patients with KD-related CAAs. A total of 98 hospitalized patients were matched as controls based on age and sex: 49 patients were allocated to a group with pneumonia and 49 patients were allocated to a group with arterio-arterial fistula. Both child-reported and parent-proxy–reported Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory surveys were collected. Results: The median (IQR) follow-up period was 5.64 (3.81-7.47) years (range, 1.03-10.67 years). The mean (SD) age at diagnosis was 3.73 (1.93) years. At baseline, children and parents as their proxies reported similar HRQOL scores for KD-related CAAs and arterio-arterial fistula that were considerably lower than for pneumonia, respectively. At long-term follow-up, children in the small and medium-sized aneurysms group reported a mean (SD) score of 81.61 (19.50), which was comparable to the arterio-arterial fistula group (83.32 [18.24]), 9.51 points lower than that of the pneumonia group ( P = .014), and 9.70 points higher than that of the giant aneurysms group ( P = .012). Parents also reported a comparable mean (SD) score of 81.03 (12.57) vs 83.30 (15.17) in the small and medium-sized aneurysms group and arterio-arterial fistula group, both of which had statistically significantly lower scores than the pneumonia group ( P = .010) and higher scores than the giant aneurysms group ( P = .009). Conclusion: Despite improvement in HRQOL scores, children with documented KD-related CAAs without complete recovery often encountered issues that disrupted their well-being during long-term follow-up. Routine outpatient HRQOL screening could be instituted to help eliminate the risk of long-term disability following initial clinical improvement.
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Yun et al. (2025) conducted a case-control in Kawasaki disease-related coronary artery aneurysm (n=164). Kawasaki disease-related coronary artery aneurysms vs. Pneumonia or arterio-arterial fistula was evaluated on Long-term health-related quality of life (child self-reported PedsQL total score) for small/medium aneurysms vs pneumonia (MD -9.51, 95% CI 2.02-16.98, p=0.014). Children with small or medium-sized Kawasaki disease-related coronary artery aneurysms had long-term health-related quality of life scores that were 9.51 points lower than matched controls with a history of pneumonia.
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