TREATMENT OPTIONS

The first thing you should realize is that there are options for treatment. There is no reason in this day and age to accept that the only option available is to ‘leave it alone’ and wait for the hemangioma to ‘go away’. Secondly, the most appropriate treatment plan needs to be individualized for each patient and each lesion. Therefore, similar lesions in different patients may be treated differently. Likewise, a given child may have more than one hemangioma and each of those may be treated differently. There are various factors that come into play when deciding what treatment is best – whether the hemangioma is proliferating or involuting; whether it is superficial, deep or compound; the location of the lesion and the age of the child. In general, there are four potential treatment options which may be used singly or in combination.