When a child or adolescent has cancer or a blood disorder, parents will do anything and go anywhere to get the best possible treatment.
Frequently, the family may feel that they need to travel great distances in order to obtain the best care. As pediatric cancer treatments have become more standardized, most physicians agree that the best place to go is an institution most convenient to the family.
The Valerie Fund Children’s Center at Stony Brook Children's, right here in Suffolk County, meets all of these criteria and more.
Stony Brook's Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Team has been at the forefront of the multidisciplinary team approach to cancer. With the highest patient satisfaction scores at Stony Brook Medicine, it has become a model for other departments.
Since the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Program began in 1991, the team has treated more than 500 children with malignant tumors. In addition, more than 50 percent of the children in Suffolk County with childhood tumors were treated at Stony Brook, two-thirds of whom were enrolled in clinical trials and other investigational therapies. Stony Brook's rate of clinical trial participation is equal to or greater than the national rate, and its disease-specific cure rates remain at or above the national benchmarks for major childhood cancers such as acute leukemia, brain tumors, lymphoma, neuroblastoma, Wilms tumors of the kidney, and bone and soft tissue sarcomas.