Boston Doctors Try To Save Girl ’ s Vision Using New Cancer Treatment

BOSTON (CBS) – It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, hearing not only that your child has cancer but that she might also lose her eye. That’s exactly what happened to an Andover family and their 3-year-old daughter. But as Dr. Mallika Marshall reports, doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital are using a revolutionary technique to try to save her vision and her life.
A little over a year ago Dania Snyder was a typical toddler until her parents noticed something unusual about her right eye.
“You could see a little flash of a fleshy piece sort of through her pupil,” explains PJ, Dania’s father.
That fleshy piece was a tumor. Retinoblastoma. Cancer of the eye.
Dania Snyder (WBZ-TV)
“As parents, you hear cancer and if you don’t have it your family yet, it’s a bubble bursting of a world that you didn’t know was so protected,” says Dania’s mother, Brianna.
Retinoblastoma is often cured by simply removing the eye but then a child becomes blind on that side. And despite the tumor, Dania’s vision is still good, so her parents decided to try to save her eye.
To save the eye, it often means intravenous chemotherapy with all the associated side effects, like nausea and hair loss, but doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital had something relatively new to offer, intra-arterial chemo or IAC.
Dr. Darren Orbach is the Chief of Neurointerventional Radiology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Dania’s doctor.
Dania Snyder before ca...

Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire - January 23, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Health – CBS Boston Tags: Health Local News Syndicated Local Boston Children's Hospital Cancer Dr. Mallika Marshall Source Type: news