NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Delay in diagnosing Kawasaki syndrome in children leads to an increase in the development of coronary artery aneurysms, researchers report in the March issue of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. Such delay appears more likely in the Hispanic community.

"Access to expert health care is not a level playing field," senior investigator Dr. Jane C. Burns told Reuters Health. "Speaking Spanish as a first language, accessing health care in Mexico, and lacking medical insurance were risk factors for developing a serious, lifelong complication of Kawasaki disease."

Dr. Burns of the University of California San Diego, La Jolla, and colleagues came to those conclusions after conducting a case-control study involving 324 Kawasaki syndrome patients seen over an 11 year period in the San Diego area. For the study, 21 patients who had coronary artery aneurysms were matched to 81 similar patients without aneurysms.

The investigators found that further risk factors for development of coronary artery aneurysms included a diagnosis established after 10 days of fever because of a delay in physician recognition of Kawasaki syndrome. Such patients were also more likely to have been hospitalized with an erroneous diagnosis.

Dr. Burns stressed that "increased risk of aneurysms as a complication of Kawasaki disease was associated with physician delay in establishing the diagnosis and not with parental delay in seeking care."

In fact, the researchers found that Spanish-speaking parents, on average, sought medical care sooner than did others.

"We need to improve health care provider education about Kawasaki disease, the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children in our country," Dr. Burns concluded.