Opinions on my sons Hemangioma(picture included)

[Jq0809]

Hi I am new here. My son is 6 weeks old and his hemangioma appeared a couple of days after birth...I'm going to include a picture I took today. His pediatrician said it would go away but I am worried that it will get a lot larger or won't go away. So I was wondering what other parents opinion was on this? Thanks...I really appreciate any imput.
Jessica

[missy]

Hi and welcome!

There's really just no way to say whether or not a hemangioma will grow. If you'd rather be seen by an expert in the field, tell us where you are and we'll try to get you to someone who has experience with birthmarks.

Missy

[Jq0809]

Thanks for the quick reply! I live in Jacksonville,FL

[missy]

You know, upper Florida, the panhandle, and south Georgia are one of the places where we really don't have any doctors listed that are convenient. My advice would be to start calling around and seeing if you can find any pediatric provider (dermatologist, ENT, family practitioner) that has any experience with birthmarks. My concern would be that if it does start to grow (and it may not) that it would grow quickly and you'd need to have a professional monitoring it, without being on a waiting list as a new patient.

Have you tried going through Nemours? They are supposed to have a good ENT program and pediatric plastic surgery there.

Try asking one of our experts what a good course of treatment might be: http://birthmark.org/experts.php

The only person I can think of from this board that I know is from your area is in St Marys or Kingsland and she goes to Colorado for treatment of an AVM. But it is OK to sit down and call different offices and ask if they have anyone who has experience with hemangiomas.

Missy

[JessieIvy]

Hi Jessica,

Your son's hemangioma looks very similar to our son's (though our son's is large in diameter). He is 9 weeks old and we started laser treatment with Dr Geronemus in NY (we live in DC and have family in NY so it isn't too inconvenient for us to travel) when Hudson was about 6.5 weeks old. We have only had two treatments so far, so I can't speak to how effectively they are working just yet, but we really like Dr. Geronemus and feel glad that we've started treating our son. I just felt so nervous not knowing how large it would grow or how long it might take to go away. I talked with several families who treated their children and they seemed happy with the laser route, so we decided to try it. The treatments are extremely short - less than ten seconds per treatment - and don't require anesthesia.
Good luck! I will try to update the forum with our results as we get further along in the treatment process.

Jessie

[wakamama]

Hello Jessica and Jessie,

Your sons' hemangioma are similar to my daughter's hemangioma. She had her 3 dye laser treatments between 2 months old and 6 months old. Unfortunately, her hemangioma is "immune" from laser treatment. We then decided to try propranolol at 7 months old. You can tell differences from the picture. The propranolol treatment ended at 15 months old. We regreat the first treatment we chose is not propranolol.

waka

[JessieIvy]

Hi Waka,

Thank you for sharing about your daughter's hemangioma and the treatment. I will keep propranolol in mind if my son's hemangioma doesn't respond well to the laser. So far, we have had three laser treatments with Dr. Geronemus (we started treating at 6 weeks when it was slightly raised off the skin, but barely, and was a thick, red textured hemangioma) and we have been pretty happy with the results so far. After the first treatment, the solid red color started to fade to a pale purple in places; after the second treatment, this happened again but there was some growth in the hemangioma during those two weeks and some of the bright red, more textured-type places came back, and after the third treatment, we see that about half of the hemangioma is made up of the bright red parts and the other half is made up of the faded purple parts, so it appears to be helping. However, our son is only 11 weeks old, so the hemangioma may grow a lot still and the doctor said we can't know exactly how his hemangioma will respond to the treatments since it is still in the growth phase. But, we will keep an eye on it and I will ask about propranolol if the laser stops showing signs of progress.

Jessie

[JessieIvy]

And Waka - I forgot to mention how great her hemangioma looks - she responded so well to the propranolol!

[Jq0809]

Thanks everyone for your replies, he has a doctors appt on the 18th with his pediatrician...I haven't had any luck yet with dermatologists in the area. @ Missy I tried the ask an expert a couple of weeks ago and never got a reply.

[missy]

Hi!

I resent your question to the doctor. I think it might have bounced back to him? If it does again, I'll see if I can send his reply on to you.

Let us know what happens on the 18th!

Missy