Background: To determine the prognosis of patients with giant coronary aneurysms (GA) caused by Kawasaki disease (KD) treated with combined oral warfarin and aspirin.
Methods and results: A multicenter follow-up study of 83 patients (65 males, 18 females) with GA who had been treated for > or =3 months with warfarin. Most patients were placed on the combination therapy as soon as the GA was detected and remained on it for 6.0 +/-5.3 years, giving a total of 482 patient-years. Target international normalized ratio of prothrombin time ranged from 1.5 to > or =2.5. During this observational period, 5 patients suffered from 8 episodes of acute myocardial infarction and 1 died. Coronary thrombus formation enforced 6 courses of intracoronary thrombolysis in 3 patients (1-4 times). Consequently, freedom of cardiac events was 92.5% at 1 year and 91% at 10 years and the linearized cardiac event rate was 2.9% patient-year. Hemorrhagic complications occurred on 8 occasions (1 subdural hematoma) in 5 patients, giving 1.7% patient-year.
Conclusions: The combination of warfarin and aspirin has an acceptably high cardiac-event-free survival in patients with GA caused by KD, though it has a certain risk of hemorrhagic complications.