Kawasaki Tomisaku

Tomisaku Kawasaki (center, right) at the 8th International Kawasaki Disease Symposium in 2005

Kawasaki Tomisaku ( Japanese 川 崎 富 作 ; * February 7, 1925 in Tōkyō ; † June 5, 2020 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese pediatrician . The Kawasaki syndrome , which was first described by Kawasaki as an independent disease, is named after him.

Life

Kawasaki was born in 1925, the youngest of seven children. He developed a significant interest in plants in his youth, but eventually followed his mother's wish, who wanted him to become a doctor. He began studying medicine at Chiba University immediately after the end of the Second World War . It was there that Kawasaki finally opted for pediatrics. Because of his family's financial difficulties, he asked for help and was found a job at the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroo, Tokyo. He was to work in this hospital for forty years.

After about ten years at the hospital, in 1961 he met the first patient with symptoms that he could not attribute to any disease, a boy of four at the time. He presented the case at an internal conference at the hospital. Other doctors there suspected a case of scarlet fever , and they initially agreed on an indefinite diagnosis. Over the next six years, Kawasaki saw other patients with the same symptoms. He published the observation of the disease in a Japanese journal in 1967. As a result, there have been numerous reactions to the article from all over Japan. In 1970 the Japanese government set up a committee to study the disease under Kawasaki. The Japan-wide investigation confirmed Kawasaki's assumption of an independent disease. In 1989 he received the Asahi Prize for research into this disease .

From 1990 Kawasaki was head of the Kawasaki Disease Research Center , visiting professor at Kurume University and also taught in the USA. He has received numerous awards, including first prize from the Japanese Pediatric Society. Kawasaki died in Tokyo in June 2020 at the age of 95.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic , attention turned to Kawasaki Syndrome as some older children around the world developed certain symptoms similar to Kawasaki Syndrome.

Individual proof

1. ↑ Pediatrician who discovered Kawasaki disease dies at 95

Web links

• Vivienne Kenrick: Profile: Tomisaku Kawasaki , The Japan Times, May 26, 2007 (English)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Kawasaki is the family name, Tomisaku the first name.