This year, Newcastle have celebrated the milestone 10 year anniversary of setting up their revolutionary ECP services.
The Great North Children’s Hospital is one of only two national centres with the expertise to provide care and treatment for children born with a gene deficiency affecting their immune system, leaving them unable to fight conditions such as Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), as well as haematology and oncology disease requiring bone marrow transplant.
While ECP was established about 45 years ago to treat a form of blood cancer affecting the skin, it has been used for children only more recently, as it is much more difficult due to the complexity of the process involved.
For blood to be taken, a large central line has to be inserted into the patient. This is relatively straightforward for adults, but much more challenging for children and in particular babies and small infants. In addition, there is a need to remove and treat a certain amount of blood which isn’t always possible for very young children, because it could cause dangerous complications.
ECP uses very specific technology with only a handful of specialist units in the world able to carry out the procedure. In 2012, the Newcastle team were presented with the need to acquire the equipment, knowledge and skills required to carry out ECP, and rapidly set up a service in Newcastle to give young children the best possible chance of survival. This was made possible with the fantastic support of charity supporters at both ‘The Bubble Foundation’ and ‘Children’s Cancer North’.
Newcastle now carries out world leading research as a Centre, and in conjunction with multi-national consortiums, looking at the clinical effectiveness of giving ECP. They are also a recognised centre of excellence, capable of delivering training courses for nursing and medical colleagues from other aspirational centres across Europe and even as far afield as Saudi Arabia.
You can read more about this story, including the background to the service, charity sponsors and Newcastle’s international training programme here.
The UK Photopheresis Society 