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The Strawberry Tongue
The Kawasaki disease was named after its founder: Tomisaku Kawasaki, who is a Japanese pediatrician. It was diagnosed and was named in the year 1967, and was considered as a new disease since it was not experienced before 1967. The Kawasaki disease is basically a syndrome or sickness that involves lymph nodes abnormality. Until today, the cause of the Kawasaki disease is unknown and still being researched on. The blood vessels inside the system would become inflamed, therefore making the immune system weak. The Kawasaki disease is often experienced by children below five years old since they have weaker immune systems. When uncured, the Kawasaki disease can get on the arteries and target the heart of the patient causing further damage in the internal organs. Good news about the disease is that it can be cured within days if treated early. However, if neglected and not treated abruptly, it can lead to serious cases and cause heart diseases.
To be able to distinguish Kawasaki disease to a normal flu, fever or other infections, these are the symptoms that come with it: when eyes become red, when rashes appear on the stomach, the chest and the genitals. The swollen tongue or the strawberry tongue is one of the popular Kawasaki symptoms (seen in the image above). Together with swollen tongue is a swollen cracked lip. In addition, because the immune system is affected, the throat is also damaged causing irritation. These are the early symptoms when a child has caught the Kawasaki disease and it can be cured early when treated early so it is better to check on the child as soon as one of the symptoms show up. Most patients’ symptoms are neglected that’s why most of the Kawasaki disease patients develop coronary heart disease. The Kawasaki disease is dangerous and is really associated with heart ailments. They say that if the Kawasaki disease is treated within 10 days from start of sickness, the child can escape heart ailments since no complications would take effect as the virus is eradicated.
When complications develop, hemoglobin starts to decline. Albumin also starts to go down together with white blood cells count.
Tomisaku Kawasaki together with his collegue Melish, developed the diagnostic criteria for the Kawasaki Disease early in the 1960’s and it is still used today to make diagnosis for the Kawasaki disease. The Kawasaki disease was originally a popular sickness back in 1960’s in Tokyo, Japan. As years went by, the disease was known around the world affecting many children.
Image from Gstatic
