COVID-19, Kawasaki disease and multisystem inflammatory syndrome: A conceptualization from the main reports

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To describe the clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19 and an atypical variety of Kawasaki disease with systemic inflammatory processes in children, and their diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. METHODOLOGY: Narrative literature review, from consultation of the databases of PubMed, Science Direct and Google academic. The following keywords (MeSH) were used for the search: “COVID-19”, “Kawasaki Disease”, “SARS-CoV-2”, “multisystem inflammatory syndrome”. Original articles and clinical case reports were included. RESULTS: Fifty-two articles were found, of which 27 were selected that met the inclusion criteria for analysis. CONCLUSIONS: With the clinical manifestations associated with COVID-19 appeared atypical multisystemic inflammatory pictures and Kawasaki disease establishes an urgency of precise and prospective data of this syndrome that manages to differentiate, in its totality, Kawasaki disease or, in its absence, to define it as a variant of the same one. Physicians caring for patients with COVID-19 should be aware of the diagnostic criteria of the new syndrome and be vigilant, especially in countries with consistent case numbers where the majority of complicated patients may be seen following SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, these research updates imply an even deeper perspective for pathophysiological study, treatment indication and conceptualization of the clinical basis for its understanding.