About the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Chang Gung Children’s Hospital
(source: http://www.cgmh.org.tw/chldhos/intr/c4a40/favorite.htm)
Pediatric hematology/oncology in Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei was established in 1976. Not until 1992 that the division of pediatric hematology/oncology was born and relocated to the 6th floor of Chang-Gung Children's Hospital at Linkou, Taoyuan. Chang-Gung Children’ Hospital is a teaching hospital of Chang-Gung University. Our subspecialty ward has 25 hospital beds, staffed with attending physicians, rotating residents, numbers of experienced nurses and pediatric oncology nurses. Today, our team members consist of 3 board-certified pediatric hematologist /oncologists, 2 oncology nurse practitioners , and 1 medical technologist. A clinical hematology laboratory offers facilities to perform general hematology and coagulation tests, including peripheral blood and bone marrow smears to be interpreted by the hematologist in charge of patients. This laboratory is established both for education and service purposes.
A chemotherapy room was designed for outpatient service. It is equipped with TV set, video, magazines, educational materials and brochures; it also has a small library supplying books for all ages. It is a venue for chemotherapy, blood transfusions, and procedures as well as a site for communications between nurse practitioners, oncology nurses and family members. It is also a place to hold educational sessions, counseling and patient-parent conferences. Family support group was established in 2001.
About 130 new pediatric cancers are diagnosed and treated in our department each year. Senior physicians have over 30 years subspecialty experience. They are active members in Taiwan’s Hematology Society and senior in the Taiwan Pediatric Oncology Group (TPOG). The team members are actively involved in the clinical trials of TPOG. Now many long-term cancer survivors are being followed in the clinic.
We diagnose and treat congenital or acquired anemia, white blood cell disorders and bleeding disorders. We take consultations for the diagnosis of patients with fever of unknown origin, hepatosplenomegaly, lymphadenopathy, and other difficult pediatric cases. For thalassemia patients, educational program on the delivery of home chelation therapy is available by appointments.
In April 1998, allogeneic bone marrow transplantation was added to our cancer treatment, as one of the new therapeutic option and for patients with medical indication. An efficient and up-to date cancer registration system is also available to us. Patients are monitored during and after completion of treatment. Since 2003, we had successfully performed unrelated donor cord blood transplantation for fourteen children with thalassemia major, the largest unrelated cord blood transplant series in Taiwan, and have achieved an unprecedented 90% engraftment. Thalassemia is a debilitating blood disease and affects hundreds of thousands of patients a year worldwide, especially in Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions. We take pride in leading this life saving therapy in Taiwan. In cooperation with immunologists, we recently diagnosed and treated an infant with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) by unrelated cord blood transplantation. The other two successful cord blood transplants from unrelated donors were for AML and osteopetrosis.
We emphasize multidisciplinary team care. We receive support and are backed up by various pediatric subspecialties, and share experience with many other support groups which are all indispensable in the care of cancer children (2006/3/27).
