Doctors at the Children Hospital No.2 in HCM City have performed a stem cell transplant for a 32-month-old girl with high-risk neuroblastoma.  Photo courtesy of the hospital

HCM CITY — Doctors at the Children Hospital No 2 in HCM City have successfully performed a stem cell transplant for a 32-month-old girl with high-risk neuroblastoma.  

It is the hospital’s first auto transplantation for a patient with neuroblastoma, Dr Trịnh Hữu Tùng, its director, told a press conference on Thursday.

In June last year the girl, N. N. M of Đắk Lắk Province, was diagnosed with the condition.

She was severely malnourished, and weighed just 11kg.

A treatment regime of chemotherapy, surgery, auto transplantation, radiation, and maintenance treatment was decided, Phan Thị Thu Trang of the Children Hospital No 2’s haematology and oncology department said.

On December 30 doctors at her hospital performed a transplant with assistance from doctors at the HCM City Blood and Transfusion Hospital, and the child was discharged two weeks later.

Her condition is now stable and doctors are waiting for better blood recovery to continue the radiation and maintenance treatment.

Around 40 children are diagnosed with neuroblastoma at the hospital every year, Trang said.

The survival rate for such children is 43 per cent, while for high-risk neuroblastoma it is only 12 per cent, she said.

In the US, neuroblastoma is the third most common type of cancer in children.

Almost 75 per cent of neuroblastoma is found in children less than four, Trang added. — VNS