CCBD: Sickle Cell Disease
Physician Contacts:
Children’s Medical Center is the only academic children’s hospital in all of North and East Texas, serving a population of more than six million persons. The hematologists (blood specialists) at Children’s who care for the children with sickle cell disease are members of the faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The sickle cell program is an integral component of the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, the hematology-oncology unit at Children’s. There is a dedicated sickle cell program staff, and patients are seen in the same outpatient facility and are hospitalized in the same inpatient unit as children with cancer and other hematologic disorders.
In 2003, UT Southwestern was awarded a multi-million-dollar, five-year grant that established the first National Institutes of Health (NIH) Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center in the Southwest. The Southwestern Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center was established at UT Southwestern and Children’s Medical Center with an additional research component at University of Texas Dallas. In 2008, the NIH changed the way it funded sickle cell research, and we are now the recipient of a NIH grant that established a Basic and Translation Research Program in Sickle Cell Disease at UT Southwestern and Children’s.
Children’s is the primary clinical site for pediatric patients. Each year more than 600 children with sickle cell disease are seen at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. After 18 years of age, patients transfer their care to our affiliated adult sickle cell program at UT Southwestern and Parkland Memorial Hospital, where more than 500 adult patients are followed.
