pediatric heart failure, heart failure, pediatric heart transplant, kawasaki disease

Long-term outcomes of patients with left ventricular dysfunction after Kawasaki disease (KD) remain unknown. The clinical course of 37 patients (29 males 8 females) with left ventricular ejection function (LVEF) less than 45% after KD since 1978 was retrospectively investigated. Cardiac events in this study were defined as admissions because of heart failure, fatal ventricular arrhythmias, heart transplantation, and death. Their ages when evaluated ranged from 1 to 70 years (median 35 years). The onset of KD ranged from 2 months to 20 years (median 21 months)...

BACKGROUND: Diagnosing left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (DD) noninvasively in children is difficult as no validated pediatric diagnostic algorithm is available. The aim of this study is to explore the use of machine learning to develop a model that uses echocardiographic measurements to explain patterns in invasively measured markers of DD in children. METHODS: Children at risk for developing DD were enrolled, including patients with Kawasaki disease, heart transplantation, aortic stenosis, and coarctation of the aorta when undergoing clinical left heart catheterization...

A biomarker is a characteristic that can be used as an indicator of a biological state. A biomarker can be a clinical observation, laboratory test or an imaging parameter. In this review, we discuss the use of biomarkers in differentiating cardiac from noncardiac disease; predicting the prognosis of patients with heart failure, pulmonary hypertension and dilated cardiomyopathy; diagnosing subclinical cardiac involvement in muscular dystrophy and postchemotherapy cancer patients; detecting acute rejection following heart transplantation; diagnosing Kawasaki disease; aiding the management of postoperative cardiac patients; and managing both common (tetralogy of Fallot) and complex (single-ventricle physiology) congenital heart diseases...

Heart transplantation (HTx) is a treatment for end-stage heart failure or a complex or inoperable congenital defect. The long-term survival and the adequate donor to recipient body weight (D/R BW) ratio remain to be determined. From March 1995 to May 2004, 14 children (6 months-16 years of age) underwent HTx due to underlying diseases of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (n = 10; 71.4%), congenital heart disease (n = 3; 21.4%), and Kawasaki disease (n = 1; 7.1%). Donor-recipient body weight ratio ranged from 0...