Click the links below to go to: www.Thalassemia.com
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www.thalassemia.com |
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Clinical Trials & Research |
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Thalassemia.com provides information from Children's Hospital & Research Center's Comprehensive Thalassemia Center. The Comprehensive Thalassemia Center is the only thalassemia center funded by the National Institutes of Health that provides access to research therapy, transfusion unit services, BMT services, home Desferal education, and access to physicians to talk about cardiac, endocrine, liver and nutritional issues.
For information visit www.thalassemia.com or call (510) 428-3884, Ext. 4398.
Thalassemia is the most common, inherited single gene disorder in the world. Early comprehensive treatment has changed thalassemia from a fatal pediatric disease to one in which patients live productive lives throughout adulthood.
About Children's Northern California Comprehensive Thalassemia Center
Children's Comprehensive Thalassemia Center is one of the premier centers in the nation for the study and treatment of thalassemia. The close collaboration between Children's Hospital & Research Center's physicians and scientists is one of our unique strengths, enabling us to provide patients with the best care available today as we work to discover more effective strategies to prevent, control, and cure thalassemia. State-of-the-art scientists and researchers collaborate side-by-side with clinical investigation and treatment. The center is dedicated to developing therapy to treat and cure the 200,000 infants born worldwide each year with sickle cell or thalassemia.
The center was established in 1991 by Elliott Vichinsky, MD. Dr. Vichinsky diagnoses and treats children with blood disorders, cancers and tumors. He founded and directs the largest hemoglobinopathy center of sickle cell disease and thalassemia in North America. He has been instrumental in implementing newborn screening programs for blood diseases in California and throughout the world.
As well, Dr. Vichinsky works with the World Health Organization studying the worldwide public health problem of thalassemia and sickle cell disease. As both a research scientist and a clinician, Dr. Vichinsky fosters collaboration between physicians and scientists, a partnership that helps speed important research findings from the laboratory to the bedside, in a process known as translational research.
Children's Hospital offers new, cutting edge technology in the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric blood diseases. Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland is one of four places in the world with a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interface Device) that can accurately non-invasively determine the body’s iron. We are one of only a handful of hospitals in the nation using special software technology (T2*) in combination with our Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) machine to safely measure iron levels in a child’s heart. Children and adults with these conditions can suffer from iron overload in the heart and liver.
About Elliott Vichinsky, MD
Dr. Vichinsky was responsible for the development of the Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program, which has cured hundreds of children who had sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, and various cancers. He has developed techniques that make blood safer for chronically transfused patients. These patients often suffer from iron overload as a result of either transfusion therapy or genetic mutations. Iron overload causes thousands of deaths each year. Dr. Vichinsky has been an international leader in developing drugs to remove excess iron and non-invasive equipment to measure iron in the body.
Dr. Vichinsky has been a leader investigating novel drugs that turn on hemoglobin-producing genes which enable sickle cell disease and thalassemia patients to produce their own healthy blood. He has authored and co-authored more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals, four books, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. He has been the principal investigator on more than 40 major research projects and has given countless presentations around the world about blood disorders.
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