Hemangioma of infancy is a condition that may be associated with significant morbidity. While evidence most supports the use of corticosteroids, there is no well-defined or Federal Drug Administration (FDA)-approved systemic therapy for hemangioma of infancy. All currently used treatments have significant risks. Dramatic improvement of complicated hemangioma of infancy to propranolol was recently reported, but details for initiating therapy, monitoring, and potential risks were not included. We present two infants treated with propranolol, who suffered complications and propose a treatment protocol to minimize potential adverse events.

Background: Vascular malformations and hemangiomas, which are endothelial lesions of childhood, may result in considerable morbidity because they can cause discomfort and functional impairment and have a negative affect on the patient's appearance. Although vascular malformations may initially appear very similar to hemangiomas, they have distinct clinical courses. Infantile hemangiomas progress through 3 stages: proliferative, involuting, and involuted. The proliferative phase is characterized by clinical growth. Once hemangiomas reach their maximum size, they begin to regress or involute. Histologically, this stage is characterized by endothelial apoptosis. Finally, the involuted stage of the hemangioma occurs when the original lesion is replaced by a connective tissue remnant. In contrast to hemangiomas, vascular malformations do not involute but continue to enlarge as the patient grows.

The lack of standardized criteria for measuring therapeutic response is a major obstacle to the development of new therapeutic agents for chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD). National Institutes of Health (NIH) consensus criteria for evaluating therapeutic response were published in 2006. We report the results of four consecutive pilot trials evaluating the feasibility and estimating the inter-rater reliability and minimum detectable change of these response criteria. Hematology-oncology clinicians with limited experience in applying the NIH cGVHD response criteria (n=34), participated in a 2.5 hour training session on response evaluation in cGVHD. Feasibility and inter-rater reliability between subspecialty cGVHD experts and this panel of clinician raters were examined in a sample of 25 children and adults with cGVHD. The minimum detectable change was calculated using the standard error of measurement. Clinicians’ impressions of the brief training session, the photo atlas, and the response criteria documentation tools were generally favorable. Performing and documenting the full set of response evaluations required a median of 21 minutes (range 12 to 60 minutes) per rater. The Schirmer tear test required the greatest time of any single test (median 9 minutes). Overall, inter-rater agreement for skin and oral manifestations was modest, however, in the third and fourth trials, the agreement between clinicians and experts for all dimensions except movable sclerosis approached satisfactory values. In the final two trials, the threshold for defining change exceeding measurement error was 19–22% body surface area (BSA) for erythema, 18–26% BSA for movable sclerosis, 17–21% BSA for nonmovable sclerosis, and 2.1–2.6 points on the 15 point NIH Oral cGHVD scale. Agreement between clinician-expert pairs was moderate to substantial for the measures of functional capacity and for the gastrointestinal and global cGVHD rating scales. These results suggest that the NIH response criteria are feasible for use, and these reliability estimates are encouraging, because they were observed following a single 2.5 hour training session given at multiple transplant centers, with no opportunity for iterative training and calibration. Research is needed to evaluate inter- and intra-rater reliability in larger samples, and to evaluate these response criteria as predictors of outcomes in clinical trials.

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This US database provides multidisciplinary information on pediatric ACD, rates of PPT, and relevant RPPT reactions, validating the high rates of pediatric ACD previously reported in the literature. The registry database is the largest comprehensive collection of US-only pediatric patch test cases on which future research can be built. Continued collaboration between patients, health care providers, manufacturers, and policy makers is needed to decrease the most common allergens in pediatric consumer products.