A partnership between Children’s Health and UT Southwestern has created one of the few specialized centers in the region dedicated to treating pediatric cerebrovascular disorders. With deep expertise and cutting-edge technology tailored specifically for children, we manage complex conditions such as strokes, moyamoya disease, arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), a vein of Galen malformations (VOGMs), cerebral aneurysms, and rare tumors like retinoblastoma.
I'd never heard of retinal blas trauma. Yeah, just the tears came and you know, it's not what you want to hear from your child. No, but he has cancer. This is a condition that um it's it's a uh cancer of the eye that develops in very very young Children. Typically uh under the age of five, he went into his nine month checkup with his pediatrician and they noticed something was not right in his eyes, come to find out it was four tumors in his eyes. He had two in each eye. And uh we were admitted into the hospital immediately. The most common way that we diagnose retinoblastoma is something called Leuco Coria that means white pupil. So our pupils in the center of our eyes are actually a hole, it's black because it you're looking into the back of the eye which is dark if you look and it's not black but white, that's not normal early diagnosis. This is crucial. It's very important because uh if the attacks early when the tumor is at an early stage, the treatment result, outcome is much better. The expectation was they were going to try and save both eyes, but they were hesitant that they would try to at least save one. Our job is to number one, try to save the life of the child, right? This is a type of cancer. But then of course, we want to try to save the eye and we also want to save as much vision as we can. If the cancer is clearly invading into the optic nerve to the brain, uh or causing other serious um uh complications, it's really not safe. They let us know, you know, there was different um process that they had to go through, you know, different chemo and what they had to offer. Um But the first one was just a regular chemo through his port. He had been started on the more traditional Venus uh infusion chemotherapy and had done well in one eye, but in the other eye, he, his cancer was not responding. Well, there was one corner that, you know, despite laser treatment, despite the systemic chemo, he got that tumor kept coming back. They were prepared every step of the way they decided to do that. Intraarterial chemotherapy, high successful rate, minimal sat effect, minimal invasive. So the advantage is very, very um obvious. Unfortunately, not every center can do that for that. You have to have a very specialized, very skilled endovascular pediatric neurosurgeon. Uh and that's Doctor Rafael Cleo and he's really world class. And uh without him, we really couldn't do the I ac treatment that we're doing. He didn't feel it, he doesn't see it. Um, he has no scars. It's, it's, it, it's amazing. Some kids, it only takes one or two or three sessions of I AC and that's it. That's all we need. Others are gonna need, you know, more than that. It's not like we do this one time. The cancer is cured. I usually don't use that word cure very often because with cancer you don't know they're cured for years. But I explained to them, this is gonna be a battle. You know, they are a loving staff and they are here to help and they're very knowledgeable in what they do and what is to come. And they are just keeping up with just all this technology, all this medicine, we make all the effort in this hospital. Everybody here, our job is to make our kids feel better. The last time they checked you n need glasses told me he had 2020 vision. It was amazing.
