Bilateral Facial Nerve Palsy in a Child: When the Smile Returns.

Bilateral facial nerve palsy (FNP) is an extremely rare clinical condition. Different from unilateral FNP, because of idiopathic or Bell's palsy in the majority of cases, bilateral FNP is most often correlated to an underlying medical condition, which can be congenital, neurological, infectious, neoplastic, traumatic, or metabolic. We describe the case of an 8-year-old girl with bilateral facial paralysis because of Epstein-Barr virus infection with late diagnosis and therapy.

Inability of Asian risk scoring systems to predict intravenous immunoglobulin resistance and coronary lesions in Kawasaki disease in an Italian cohort.

Since resistance to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is associated with coronary lesions (CALs) in Kawasaki disease (KD), it is crucial to identify patients at risk to protect them from coronary involvement. The available risk scores to predict IVIG resistance were developed in Asian populations in whom their effectiveness has been proven, but data on non-Asian children are limited. The aim of this study is to evaluate the ability of the Kobayashi, Egami, and Formosa risk scores to predict IVIG resistance and CALs in Italian patients with KD.

Gastrointestinal presentation of Kawasaki disease: A red flag for severe disease?

Background: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a febrile systemic vasculitis of unknown etiology and the main cause of acquired heart disease among children in the developed world. To date, abdominal involvement at presentation is not recognized as a risk factor for a more severe form of the disease.

Objective: To evaluate whether presenting abdominal manifestations identify a group at major risk for Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG)-resistance and coronary lesions.