129 - THE JAPANESE NATIONWIDE SURVEY OF KAWASAKI DISEASE 2023-24: RENEWAL OF SURVEY METHODS AND DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Dr. Tomisaku Kawasaki first reported patients with Kawasaki disease in 1967, followed by the first nationwide Kawasaki disease survey conducted in 1971 to determine the number of patients with Kawasaki disease throughout Japan. Since then, the survey has been conducted every two years in cooperation with pediatricians across Japan until 2023 (27th survey). To date, the surveys obtained clinical information on more than 400,000 patients diagnosed with Kawasaki disease throughout Japan from 1970 through 2022. However, in 2023, the project director announced that the survey would be discontinued due to his retirement.
In response to this announcement, with official approval from the Japanese Society of Kawasaki Disease, we have launched the following project to renew the traditional survey methods and data management system. This renewal project (the Japanese nationwide survey of Kawasaki disease 2025) appropriately takes over the large-scale data obtained from past surveys, newly obtains clinical information on patients who developed Kawasaki disease throughout Japan during 2023–2024, and reports the epidemiologic findings of Kawasaki disease in Japan. The project includes two major frameworks: (1) database development using SQL to integrate data accumulated by the past 1–27th surveys with other available data, such as population, climate, human mobility information, infectious disease surveillance, etc.; and (2) improvement of the upcoming survey conducted in 2025 using electronic data capture system (REDCap) instead of the traditional paper-based method (see the attached figure).
The information obtained from past surveys is the world's largest Kawasaki disease database, a "treasure" of Japan. With this treasure, the world's collaboration studies will be launched to investigate epidemiologic clues that may lead to identifying the trigger of the development of Kawasaki disease, as well as the therapeutic innovations to prevent CA abnormalities.