Charleston to Become World Center to Correct Birth Marks

February 7th, 2006: Dr. Marcelo Hochman, a native of Venezuela who received his medical education to become a facial plastic surgeon at Stanford University, has founded the Hermangiona Foundation in conjunction with MUSC. His organization specializes in vascular birth marks, malformations and port wine stains. These abnormalities occur in 1 out of every 10 children, with 400,000 new cases each year.

There currently exists a big gap between what physicians counsel families and what is actually available to treat these conditions. Even though the cases range from small to extreme, the general advice has been to “wait, it will go away”. Instead in many cases the condition grows worse, though some stains do fade. This is more than an appearance concern for the child’s self esteem in involved. It affects personality as the child is continually singled out as being different, thus the child has an improper perception of self.

Treatment takes place by laser, medicine and general surgery or a combination of two or three procedures. In the cases of large growths, which are in reality solid tumors, surgery is done in stages to minimize the healing. Usually skin graphs are avoided.

The mission of the Hermangiona Foundation is to give treatment to children who cannot afford or do not have access to care, and to educate the public at large on the potential treatment of these conditions.

The vision of the foundation is to make Charleston a national and world impact center for treatment so as to have a direct positive effect on the lives of children and their families. Also the foundation seeks to have a direct effect on the medical management of these abnormalities.

The foundation is dedicated to minimizing its overhead. Currently just 3% of its funding goes into management. They have just one employee who serves as executive director. Dr. Hochman receives no fee for his services.

The broad goals of the foundation are to change the way the medical community addresses the problem, help affected children better face the world, and to change the world-one face at a time. The foundation hopes to involve Rotary International in finding a cure and help physicians treat patients around the world. A cure can come within the next ten years.

Reported by Fred Sales, Keyway Committee