Continuing with America’s Blood Center "Pints for Half Pints: Giving Kids Another Chance" campaign, this month’s article will focus on the cancers affecting children.

Approximately 3,000 children under the age of 15 are diagnosed with leukemia and lymphoma each year. Leukemia and lymphoma are cancers that originate in the bone marrow and lymphatic tissues. The use of chemotherapy or anti-cancer drugs, usually in combinations of two or more drugs, is largely responsible for the dramatic improvement in managing leukemia and lymphoma. Bone marrow transplants also are standard treatment for selected patients with these cancers. Bone marrow transplant patients use on average about 20 units of red blood cells and 120 units of platelets.

Leukemia is the number one disease killer of children. With the best treatments, about 73 percent of children with leukemia will survive.

One of the children "given a second chance" is Sarah, a little girl in Dayton, Ohio. At 13-months old, Sarah was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. For two years, she underwent chemotherapy. When Sarah was just 2½, her leukemia relapsed. After a bone marrow transplant, Sarah experienced Grafts Versus Host Disease (GVHD), causing complications of the stomach and intestines.

Sarah last used blood in November 1998 for a stomach surgery. Future surgeries will be necessary as Sarah grows up and most likely will required more blood. In all, Sarah has used hundreds of units of red blood cells and platelets during her illness and ten surgeries. Although her leukemia has resulted in permanent health implications, Sarah, now eight, has been in remission for almost five years. (Sarah’s story was submitted by Community Blood Center, Dayton, Ohio.)