Kawasaki Disease in Mongolia: Report of the first cases

Introduction: First described in Japan, a Kawasaki disease (KD) is now known to occur in both endemic and community-wide epidemic forms in the Americas, Europe and Asia in children of all races. However, there has been no report of KD from Mongolia thus far. We aimed to investigate the cases of KD among children in Mongolia. Methods: A retrospective descriptive design was used in this survey covering medical reports of all hospitalized children between 1995-2008 throughout the Mongolia. Results: In two nationwide surveys nearly 250000 inpatient medical histories of children aged 0-16 years have been revised and 9 cases of KD were investigated in Mongolia. Of these 4 cases were observed in provinces and the remaining in Ulaanbaatar. Age of KD cases ranged from 1.4-14 years and 7 (78%) of them were boys. Six (67%) cases of KD were defined as having KD with all 6 clinical criteria fulfilled. Diagnose of KD have not been done in more than half of the cases, and the proper treatment was not administered. In addition, cardiac sequelae has been observed in 56% of the cases of KD. Conclusion: The results of the current study reveals that KD do exist in Mongolia, and that there is an urgent need to continue training of pediatricians in order to improve the diagnosis and proper treatment of KD.