Abstract:

Objective To analyze the clinical characteristics of pediatric hemangioma patients with Kasabach-Merritt phenomenon (KMP), and sum up its treatment experience. Methods The clinical data of children with KMP diagnosed from April 1, 2006 to December 31, 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. Results A total of 36 children with hemangioma were accompanied by KMP, accounting for 0.6% of the children with hemangioma. Five patients (13.9%) showed typical clinical manifestations of KMP in the early stage of the disease; 26 patients (72.2%) had superficial tumors with small lesions; 4 patients (11.1%) had deep-seated tumors with relatively larger lesions; 1 patient (2.8%) presented with hematochezia as the initial symptom, and the tumor was not detected. Median follow-up time was 86 months. All patients manifested thrombocytopenia at the time of diagnosis and the median platelet counts were 24.5(11.8-43.5)×10⁹/L, which increased to 168.0(101.8-314.5)×10⁹/L after treatment. Twenty-four patients (66.7%) received combined therapy, all of them got complete remission (CR). Twelve patients (33.3%) received monotherapy, of them, five patients got CR, three got partial remission (PR), four showed no response. The overall CR rate was 80.6%, PR rate was 8.3%, and NR rate was 11.1%. The 7-year overall survival rate was 88.9% and the fatality rate was 11.1%. Conclusions The masking of symptom was the characteristics of KMP. Appropriate laboratory testing should be performed as soon as possible for patients with dysfunction of blood coagulation or rapidly progressive hemangiomas.

Key words: Kasabach-Merritt phenomenon, clinical characteristics, treatment, child