about pediatric hematology:
Hematology in children encompasses any disorder of the blood or bone marrow, as well as many disorders of lymph nodes and the immune system. Your blood is made from stem cells in your bone marrow and is comprised of three categories of cells: white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. White blood cells are like the military of the immune system, and lymph nodes are the military bases. Red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. Platelets plug the gap when you are bleeding. There are also non-cellular components of blood, which is the serum portion of blood. This includes things like clotting (coagulation) factors, antibodies, certain proteins, and, like a highway, anything that needs to travel from one part of the body to another.
Dr. Stauffer trained in New York at one of the world’s leading centers for pediatric hematology and bone marrow disorders, where patients fly in from around the world to be evaluated. The good news is that now you don’t have to fly across the country to benefit from that experience, as most pediatric hematology disorders can be diagnosed and treated right here in Wichita. For some patients who need access to treatments or technologies unavailable in Wichita, we also co-manage care in conjunction with larger centers to reduce the burden of travel for families.
Some of the hematology disorders that we can see in children include:
Disorders of white blood cells and the immune system
- Combined variable immunodeficiency (CVID)
- Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)
- Autoimmune neutropenia
- Congenital neutropenia
- Neutropenia due to viral suppression
- Lymphopenia
- Lymphadenopathy
- Evan syndrome
- Aplastic anemia
- Leukemia
- Lymphoma
- Rosai-Dorfman disease
- Autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS)
- Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH)
- Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH)
- Splenomegaly
Bleeding, clotting, and platelet disorders
- Immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP)
- May-Hegglin anomaly
- Myosin heavy chain defects
- Von Willebrand disease
- Factor deficiency
- Factor V Leiden mutation
- Stroke
- Blood clots (thrombi)
- Pulmonary emboli
- Heavy menstrual bleeding
- Nosebleeds (epistaxis)
- Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP)
- Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC)
Disorders of red blood cells
- Sickle cell disease
- Thalassemia
- Autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA)
- Iron deficiency with or without anemia
- Transient erythroblastopenia of childhood (TEC)
- G6PD deficiency
- Iron overload
- Folate deficiency
- B12 deficiency
- Vitamin K deficiency
- Blood transfusions
- Hereditary elliptocytosis
- Hereditary stomatocytosis
- Hereditary xerocytosis
- Hereditary spherocytosis
- Pyruvate kinase deficiency (PK deficiency)
- Cold agglutinin disease
- Paroxysmal cold hemoglobinuria
- Hemolytic uremic syndrome, typical (HUS) and atypical (aHUS)
- Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH)
- Anemia of prematurity
Disorders of bone marrow and bone marrow failure syndromes
- Aplastic anemia
- Fanconi anemia
- Schwachman-Diamond Syndrome
- Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (Pure red cell aplasia)
- Dyskeratosis congenita
- Marrow suppression due to medications or viral infections
