Symptoms

The initial symptom of Kawasaki disease is high fever persisting for five days or longer. Apart from this, major features of this disease that parents should look out for include changes in extremities, skin eruptions or rashes following fever, changes in lips and oral cavity (red tongue, red and cracking lips), blood shot eyes (conjunctival injection) and enlargement of the lymph nodes.

Changes in the extremities include redness and swelling of the hands and feet. When the fever subsides after one to three weeks, there’s desquamation of the fingers and toes while white lines across the fingernails called Beau’s lines may appear after one to two months.

Skin eruptions or rashes on the trunk and extremities appear usually five days after the start of fever. These may come in the form of urticarial exanthema, a morbilliform maculopapular eruption or a diffuse scarlatiniform rash.