A Doctor’s Lifelong Quest to Solve One of Pediatric Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries
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At the Kawasaki Disease Clinic at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, led by Dr. Burns, caring for children affected by Kawasaki disease is always linked to the search for the cause.
On a recent Wednesday morning, Dr. Kirsten Dummer, a pediatric cardiologist, was examining the heart scans of a 2-year-old who showed signs of a large aneurysm on the right side of the heart.
“The biggest question from parents is: How did this happen? How did my child get this? In every patient room, that’s what they fundamentally want to know,” she said. “Year after year after year, they come back and ask us, ‘Do you guys know more yet?’”
Dr. Burns, who has continued to see patients herself, said those inquiries motivated her.
“If we were all Ph.D.s in the laborator...