Cancer and Blood Disorders

Cameron shows off his star bandage alongside his stuffed animal’s matching bandage.

No kid wants to have surgery. It’s not a fun experience – but Dr. Kimberly Riehle, an attending surgeon at Seattle Children’s Hospital, does her best to help reassure patients and families that everything will be okay by creating custom bandages shaped like hearts, trains and even fish.

A personalized touch

“I think the designs make the kids feel special,” said Riehle. “When we see kids, typically something unexpected has happened to them. They are seemingly healthy and then something happens that causes them to need surgery. These situations can be really stressful for parents and families. Personalizing the dressings is just one way I can help to make the experience better for them.”

Each year, Seattle Children’s surgical teams – from craniofacial to orthopedics – perform about 13,000 surgeries, double the number of any other institution in the region. But for Riehle it’s about more than the sheer number of surgeries she performs; it’s about caring for each individual patient.

The personalized bandages are one way Riehle can help children who need surgery – and their families – cope with the experience. Read full post »

When speaking about breast and colorectal cancers, typically you wouldn’t think of children. These cancers are considered adult conditions and rarely occur in individuals under the age of 21. But according to two new studies from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), although these diseases are rare in kids, they do still occur.

“The thought that kids even face these diseases is surprising,” said Dr. Morgan Richards, research fellow in the division of general surgery at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “But that’s why it’s important to study such diseases.”

According to investigators at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Maine Medical Center, who presented this week at the 2014 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons, the studies highlight the need for an increased awareness among pediatric clinicians that these cancers do occur in children and a stronger collaboration between adult clinicians and pediatric care providers to increase survival rates. Read full post »

In the video above, take an inside look at Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Cancer Care Unit and meet the individuals at Seattle Children’s dedicated to helping children and teens conquer childhood cancer, the second leading cause of death in children ages 5-14.

Tour the country’s first adolescent and young adult cancer unit thanks to a guide who knows the unit all too well, a former patient. See first-hand the cutting-edge research that is saving and enhancing the lives of children and adolescents – from using the body’s own immune system to fight cancer to a relatively new form of radiation therapy that offers hope to children with recurrent neuroblastoma. Read full post »

Rene Soto Taylor has done his best, and has put in his all to overcome cancer. At only 8 years old, he’s been through countless treatments to try to rid his body of the most common and most difficult type of solid tumor to treat in children – neuroblastoma. Today, Rene is hoping doctors have finally found the treatment that will conquer his disease: I-131-MIBG therapy.

A relatively new form of therapy, I-131-MIBG therapy delivers radiation directly to tumors, killing the cancer cells. This type of therapy concentrates the radiation at the site of the cancer, which means fewer long-term risks for patients. Read full post »

Shannon Keating, 16, before cancer diagnosis.

Shannon Keating always imagined that she would be a mom some day, but she didn’t expect she’d be treated at a fertility clinic at age 17. Shannon was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma as a high school sophomore, was successfully treated and then relapsed nine months later. As she prepared to fight for her life a second time, experts at Seattle Children’s Hospital helped her preserve her dream of being a parent one day.

A devastating diagnosis

Shannon was first diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma in March 2013, after she discovered a lump on her neck. The treatment was six months of less-aggressive chemotherapy that oncologists did not believe would affect her fertility.

“I was relived that this therapy was less toxic, but when it was finished I didn’t feel like I was done,” Shannon said. “I had this feeling hanging over my head. I believed my cancer would come back.”

Unfortunately, Shannon was right. That December, her cancer relapsed. Facing a life-threatening illness once again, she learned her second round of treatment would be more aggressive and could cause infertility. Doctors offered her the opportunity to freeze her eggs so that she might later become pregnant using in-vitro fertilization, but Shannon was initially overwhelmed. Read full post »

This is a special guest post from JoNel Aleccia, staff writer at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. See the original article and photos here.

Rachel Dixon holds her son Ezra, who was born with SCID. Nearly two months after having a life-saving bone marrow transplant from his brother, he’s doing well. Photo courtesy of Bo Jungmayer / Fred Hutch News Service

Ezra Dixon was born April 7, four months after the state of Washington first starting screening newborns for the disorder commonly known as “bubble boy disease,” which leaves its patients at the mercy of common germs.

Some 22,610 babies were tested before him and more than 28,000 have been tested since, all negative, health records show. But Ezra is different.

The bald, blue-eyed boy is the only child in the state so far diagnosed with severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID, detected through the program.

When staff at the Washington State Department of Health Newborn Screening Lab analyzed the drop of blood pricked from his heel shortly after birth, they found none of the T-cells that protect the body from infection, a certain sign of the rare disorder.

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Seattle Children’s Research Institute adolescent medicine expert Dr. Rachel Katzenellenbogen.

Nearly all men and women in the United States are infected with human papillomavirus (HPV) during their lives, putting them at greater risk of developing life-threatening cervical, anal, vaginal, penile, throat and tongue cancers. But, what if it was possible to stop these cancers from developing?

The National Cancer Institute has awarded Seattle Children’s Research Institute adolescent medicine expert Dr. Rachel Katzenellenbogen more than $2 million to research that possibility. She is studying what happens in the body between the time of HPV infection and cancer development in search of opportunities to intervene and prevent malignant disease.

“There are generations of people who did not get the HPV vaccine or got vaccinated after they were already exposed to HPV,” Katzenellenbogen said. “Those people could still develop cancer. We need to understand their disease process if we are going to help them.” Read full post »

Dr. Douglas Hawkins is the chair of the COG study

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, Children’s Oncology Group (COG) researchers presented promising findings from an international study that has identified a new therapy for treating rhabdomyosarcoma, a common childhood cancer. The therapy has fewer harsh side effects, meaning it lessens the chance of infections, need for blood transfusions and infertility later in life.

“Although we did not improve the cure rate, we are excited that we have identified a therapy that was as effective as standard treatment, but has fewer harmful side effects,” said Dr. Douglas Hawkins, chair of the COG study and associate division chief of Hematology/Oncology at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “Most children are cured of this cancer, and so we want to limit not only the side effects they experience during treatment, but also reduce the side effects that affect long-term health.”

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In honor of Brain Tumor Awareness Month, former Seattle Children’s patient Nina Garkavi shares her experience of battling a brain tumor as a young adult.

Nina with her dog Oscar at the Run of Hope in 2012

My name is Nina Garkavi and I am now 25 years old. I would have never thought I would be so closely connected to Seattle Children’s Hospital. My family moved to America when I was just 4 years old and I went through my childhood thankfully not needing any of the services that are provided by Seattle Children’s.

After finishing high school in Seattle, I moved to New York City for college. I scored a job on Fifth Avenue right after graduating in 2010 and began working in the big city. While it was all new and filled with busy days, I really felt like this was the start of my new journey and I was climbing up the big New York City ladder. I had to think about a lot of things – how would I afford living in the city? What train would I take to get to work? Where would I do laundry because there wasn’t a machine in the building? All those questions and more were filling up my mind but never did I think about cancer or what I would do if I got it. Not at 22. That was not something I was going to have to worry about…right? Wrong.

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Eighteen-year-old Ibrahim El-Salaam, aka “I-Bizzle,” was born with a blood disorder called sickle cell disease and has been coming to Seattle Children’s Hospital for as long as he can remember. His disease has required him to spend a lot of time in the Inpatient Cancer Unit at Seattle Children’s, which houses patients who require inpatient stays for both cancer and blood disorders. When he’s there, he likes to find fun ways to pass the time – like making an “MTV Cribs”-inspired video to show off his pad in the country’s first Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Cancer Unit, which opened last year.

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