IMS & SUM Hospital: Two Decades of Excellence in Hemato-Oncological Care
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The incidence of blood cancer or leukemia in India has been on the upswing with a high number of children getting afflicted by the disease.
Children in the age group of one to 10 years are getting afflicted by the disease but are displaying better capacity to defeat the ailment, Prof. (Dr.) Priyanka Samal, Professor and Head of the Department of Hematology, Hemato Oncology, Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital in Bhubaneswar, said.
Though new cases of leukemia are being detected among the young, around 80 to 90 per cent of the children are able to defeat the disease with timely treatment and care, she said.
Prof. (Dr.) Samal said pollution, radiation and use of chemical fertilizer were among the prime causes of the disease.Stating that between 80,000 to one lakh new cases of blood cancer are detected in India annually, she said it accounted for around 70,000 lives.
The symptoms of the disease which included continued fever, fall in hemoglobin, total leukocyte count and platelet level, appearance of black spots on the body and bleeding, should not be ignored. This called for urgent blood examination of the patient and medical consultation.
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In case children suffered from fever for eight to ten days, they should get medical attention, Prof. (Dr.) Samal said adding IMS and SUM Hospital had facilities for latest treatment regimen like Bone Marrow Transplantation (BMT), haplo transplant and Chimeric Antigen Receptor- T (CAR-T) Cell Therapy. As of now 70 BMTs, three haploidentical hematopoetic stem transplantations and three CAR-T cell therapy had been successfully done at IMS and SUM hospital, Prof. Samal said.
For the first time in Odisha, the hospital’s department of Clinical Hematology had successfully conducted a Haploidentical Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) on a female patient suffering from Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in April 2024.
Haploidentical transplant is a type of allogeneic transplant in which healthy, blood forming cells are taken from a half-matched donor to replace the unhealthy ones in the patient, Dr. Samal said.
Dr. Samal said: “We have been conducting fully matched sibling donor stem cell transplants but it is difficult to find a healthy Matched Sibling Donor (MSD) for every patient eligible for HSCT. There is only 1 in 4 or 25 per cent chance of a patient matching with his or her sibling.But Haploidentical HSCT provides almost 100 per cent possibility of getting a 50 per cent matched healthy donor for a patient,” she said.
“Recent advancements and understanding show Haplo transplants are providing patients a hope for cure without a MSD with manageable complications and better outcome,” she said.
IMS and SUM Hospital, already in the forefront of hemato-oncological care, has become the first hospital in Odisha to offer the revolutionary CAR T-cell therapy to treat blood cancer patients.
This innovative cell and gene therapy harnesses the body’s immune system to fight cancer, Prof. Samal said.
The first therapy had been applied on a 15-year-old girl from Mayurbhanj district who had responded positively to the treatment and was doing well, she said.
Unlike traditional chemotherapy, CAR T-cell therapy genetically modifies the patient’s T-cells--- critical cells in the immune system—to recognize and target cancer cells and destroy them.
Explaining the process, she said the patient’s own cells were used, genetically modified and proliferated in a lab and then re-infused into the patient’s body. These enhanced cells then sought out and destroyed the cancer cells with precision. “This form of therapy has shown remarkable success globally, especially for patients who did not respond to conventional treatment and BMT, and now holds promise for patients in India,” Prof. (Dr.) Samal said.
Prof. (Dr.) Pusparaj Samantasinghar, Medical Superintendent of the hospital saidblood cancer patients being treated in the hospital were getting the service of Department of Transfusion Medicine, Genetic and Molecular Lab, Lab Hematology, Critical Care Unit and specialized nursing care under the same roof.
Prof. (Dr.) Sanghamitra Mishra, Dean of IMS and SUM Hospital, said the hospital was extending a wide range of diagnostic services including advanced imaging and laboratory tests to accurately identify the case.
The hospital has been extending healthcare to the masses for nearly two decades with the level of treatment improving every passing year, said Prof. (Dr.) Samir Sahu, Professor in the Medicine Department.
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