Acacia and her mother Hailey Puleo return to Children’s for Acacia’s annual appointment. Grateful for the outstanding care Acacia receives, the Puleos have donated toward transplant research, Children’s transplant camp and a plasmapheresis machine, which provides technological, dialysis-like treatment for patients in end-stage kidney failure.
Join featured speaker David H. Perlmutter, MD, Children’s physician-in-chief and scientific director, and other outstanding health science researchers for thoughtful discussions on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009 at the University of Pittsburgh Winter Academy in Naples, Florida. Call Kimberley A. Hammer at 412.586.6310.
If not for the research being conducted at Children’s Hospital to reduce — even eliminate — the doses of powerful, post-transplant anti-rejection drugs, 6-year-old Acacia Puleo, of Chappaqua, N.Y., would have been unable to take up tae kwon do, join her community soccer team or enter first grade with her friends. Acacia’s success story started shortly after she was born, when her parents, Hailey and Paul, learned that their baby’s life depended on a small bowel and liver transplant. Their consulting surgeon, who had trained at Children’s, said that Acacia needed to be treated in Pittsburgh, where pediatric transplant survival rates are among the highest in the world. The transplant was a success. “That’s when we learned of the significance of the research,” says Mr. Puleo. Investigators have designed simple blood tests to figure out why some patients need more immunosuppression while others need less. Acacia’s transplant surgeon, Rakesh Sindhi, MD, co-director of Pediatric Transplantation, and director of Pediatric Transplant Research, focuses on protocols to lower toxic immunosuppressant drugs for young transplant patients. Today, Acacia’s immunosuppression is almost negligible. “At Children’s, we found hope,” says Mrs. Puleo.
“With the recent opening of the new John G. Rangos Sr. Research Center — this region’s hub of pediatric health research — Children’s will continue to recruit top researchers from around the country.”
— David H. Perlmutter, MD, physician-in-chief and scientific director