Treatment of life-threatening hemangiomas of childhood

HEMANGIOMAS ARE the most common tumor of infancy. Although a majority of these tumors regress without treatment by age 10, a small percentage may cause serious complications, such as obstruction of visual, auditory, digestive or respiratory systems, ulceration and intractable pain, high output cardiac failure, and thrombocytopenia. Although options for treatment of these tumors include surgical resection, chemotherapy, embolization, laser therapy, and radiotherapy, they have been largely abandoned for corticosteroid treatment. More recently, interferon-2 alpha (IFN-2α) has been used to treat children with steroid-resistant hemangiomas and may be the choice in children with life-threatening hemangiomas.