Standard treatment of acute Kawasaki disease involves giving 2 grams per kilogram of immunoglobulin intravenously along with aspirin. More than half of the patients with acute Kawasaki disease, nonetheless, can be cured by giving only 1 gram per kilogram of immunoglobulin, thus reducing this aspect of the cost of treatment by half. Our purpose was to predict those patients with acute Kawasaki disease who would respond to treatment with 1 gram per kilogram of immunoglobulin given intravenously on the basis of their clinical profiles and laboratory findings prior to the initial treatment. We performed a retrospective review of the clinical records of consecutive patients with acute Kawasaki disease treated in our hospital with intravenous immunoglobulin from January, 2001, to December, 2005.

During this period, we treated in this fashion 98 patients with acute Kawasaki disease. 65% of these needing immunoglobulin therapy were cured by giving 1 gram per kilogram. The neutrophil count and the percentage of white blood cells representing neutrophils, along with aspirate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, bilirubin and C reactive protein, were all significantly lower, and sodium was significantly higher, in those responding to 1 gram per kilogram of immunoglobulin when compared to those who did not respond. The days of illness at the first intravenous treatment was later in those responding than in those failing to respond. We generated a score for prediction, assigning a point for each of C reactive protein equal to or greater than 10 mg/dl, sodium equal to or lower than 133 meq/l, alanine aminotransferase equal to or greater than 110 IU/l, and 2 points for the percentage of white blood cells representing neutrophils equal to or greater than 70%. Using a cut-off point of a score less than 2, we were able to identify those responding with 60% sensitivity, and 91% specificity.

Thus, we are now able to predict those patients with acute Kawasaki disease who will respond to immunoglobulin given intravenously at 1 gram per kilogram using laboratory data, with a potential saving in medical costs.

Creating eponyms for surgical procedures or medical discoveries can be a simple objective process of attaching names of innovators. Some eponyms, however, have a controversial history. Undertaking the first systemic-to-pulmonary arterial shunt required the combined efforts of Helen Taussig, Vivien Thomas, and Alfred Blalock. In this review, I attempt to look beyond the mechanics of attributing the eponym to the larger social history surrounding the term.

The history of Helen Taussig is well known. Contrary to popular belief, however, she was not the first director of the pediatric cardiology clinic at the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children. She was second director, succeeding Clifton B. Leech. Edwards A. Park, Chief of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, appointed Leech the first director of the pediatric cardiac clinic in the fall of 1928. In this vignette, I summarize the contributions of Clifton Leech to the development of paediatric cardiology.

In patients with coronary arterial disease, stress imaging is able to demonstrate abnormalities in the motion of the ventricular walls, and abnormalities in coronary arterial perfusion not apparent at rest. It can also provide information on prognostic factors. In patients with congenitally malformed hearts, stress imaging is used to determine contractile reserve, abnormalities of mural motion, and global systolic function, but also to assess diastolic and vascular function. In most of these patients, stress is usually induced using pharmacological agents, mainly dobutamine given in varying doses. The clinical usefulness of abnormal responses to the stress induced in such patients has to be addressed in follow-up studies. The abnormal stress might serve as surrogate endpoints, predicting primary endpoints at an early stage, which are useful for stratification of risk in this population of growing patients. We review here the stress imaging studies performed to date in patients with congenitally malformed hearts, with a special emphasis on echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.