Annual Report 2018

Department of Pediatric Surgery

Kazuaki Shimada, Tomoro Hishiki, Naonori Kawakubo

Introduction

 The Department of Pediatric Surgery was newly established in April 2016 to provide surgical treatment for pediatric cancers. Our team specializes in surgeries for a wide variety of tumors including neuroblastomas, nephroblastomas, hepatoblastomas, Ewing sarcomas, rhabdomyosarcomas, osteosarcomas, germ cell tumors, and all other types of tumors arising in children and adolescents.

The Team and What We Do

 The outpatient service of our department is open two days a week, Tuesday and Thursday, to treat newly diagnosed patients and to provide follow-up treatment for patients who received surgery. Weekly conferences are held with pediatric oncologists from the Department of Pediatric Oncology.

 We particularly specialize in performing surgical operations on infants and small children but also care for adolescents and young adults (AYA) patients in collaboration with expert surgeons of our adult team.

Research activities

 Our staff members play key roles in nationwide collaborative studies aimed to establish precision medicine for pediatric solid tumors using oncopanels designed to reveal targetable gene arrangements. We also are involved in translational research activities on immunotherapy for neuroblastoma and other solid tumors.

Clinical trials

 We have a leading role in clinical trials conducted by the Japanese Childhood Cancer Group (JCCG), with particular interest in neuroblastoma and hepatoblastoma.

Education

 We are accepting trainees and students worldwide and nationwide.

Future prospects

 Pediatric cancers that are cured by surgery alone are very rare. Multidisciplinary treatment combined with surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy is often needed to treat such disease. We collaborate with the Department of Pediatric Oncology and other related departments, and provide advanced treatment for pediatric patients.