From HealthNewsDigest.com Children's Health "Hemangioma - Ending the Trauma"
09-Apr-2009
From HealthNewsDigest.com
Children's Health
"Hemangioma - Ending the Trauma"
March 30, 2009
(HealthNewsDigest.com)
- Recent advances in the treatment of Hemangioma are giving new hope to
the parents enduring the shock and despair of discovering that their
child is suffering from this condition. Hemangiomas and other vascular
anomalies, run the gamut of small, inconsequential marks to life
threatening and disfiguring lesions, and over 400,000 children in the
United States alone are born with this condition every year.
Better
knowledge of the basic biology of Hemangiomas, improvements in
technology, improved management of lesions, and more parental awareness
gained through the internet are all contributing to changing views on
early medical intervention.
Dr Marcelo Hochman is a parent who was dismayed with the discovery of a hemangioma on his infant son’s chest. Though it was ultimately a non-consequential lesion, the lack of information and guidance was the impetus for him to become interested in these children. The conventional wisdom of ‘leave it alone, it will go away’ still perpetuated today in most quarters prompted Dr Hochman to found the Hemangioma International Treatment Center and The Hemangioma Treatment Foundation to deal exclusively with children suffering from hemangiomas and vascular malformations.
In an effort to
expand access to those parents unable to afford the cost of medical
treatment, Dr Hochman founded The Hemangioma Treatment Foundation in
2003. To date, the foundation has provided care to 110 children who
otherwise would not have been treated.. Dr Hochman’s specialization is
attracting an increasing number of patients from abroad, including
Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, Peru, China and Turkey, as
well as disadvantaged children from the United States. Why girls and
low birth weight babies are increasingly affected by this condition is
one of the research areas currently being investigated by the
foundation.
During the last ten years, Dr Hochman has treated
over 1,000 patients. Two examples of the success of his treatment are
the young boy with a facial tumor that had grown so large that the
boy’s parents had been told by their local hospital that further
treatment was not an option and that the child should be taken home to
die. This advice was unacceptable to the parents who then found Dr
Hochman via the Internet. Through a variety of surgeries and treatments
Dr Hochman successfully treated the child who is now vibrant, happy and
attending elementary school.
The second example was of a young
girl whose hemangioma first appeared as a golf ball sized tumor on the
tip of her nose, distorting her appearance. Again, Dr Hochman operated
successfully removing the hemangioma. Six years later the child had the
self-confidence to enter, and win, the “Little Miss South Carolina”
pageant.
Feeling different because of a facial disfigurement can
have significant emotional and psychological consequences on a child as
they develop their sense of self, especially between the ages of 2-3
years of age. Being singled out by others and not being a welcome part
of a group is extremely distressing for the child is internalized as a
feeling of ‘there must be something wrong with me’. Likewise, it is
heartbreaking for any parent to hear things like. “Why is everyone
staring at me?” or “Why won’t anyone play with me? and even ‘What did
you do to your child?”
Because of the new environment of early
medical intervention fewer children and families will have to
experience these feelings in the future.
www.hemangiomatreatment.com
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