First Patient Undergoes Unique Cancer Treatment at Children's Hospital

MADISON - Matt Thuente sat up in his hospital bed with a Minnesota Twins baseball cap perched on his head as the four-inch-thick lead door to his room opened slowly. In stepped his mother Patricia, wearing a protective gown and carrying Matt’s lunch on a tray.

After sharing some small talk, Patricia exited the room, making sure beforehand to remove the gown and dispose of it into a tall waste basket.

The door closed slowly as Patricia joined her husband Paul in an adjacent room where they could talk to their son on an intercom system and watch his movements on a television monitor. In another room, nurses checked out Matt’s vital signs on several computer screens.

Matt, a 23-year-old resident of Eagan, Minn., was the first patient with neuroblastoma treated with use of meta-iodobenzylgaudine (MIBG) at American Family Children’s Hospital.

The treatment involves the patient receiving high doses of radiation in a room specially designed with lead-lined walls. To avoid radiation exposure, family members and caregivers are allowed only limited contact with the patient and must wear protective clothing and equipment for several days.

It is a sacrifice Matt was willing to make because other treatments, such as surgery and chemotherapy, had not worked.

American Family Children’s Hospital is one of just a handful of medical facilities in the country to provide this unique treatment for neuroblastoma, a form of cancer that often begins in the abdomen and may spread to the lymph nodes, liver, bones and bone marrow.

While most cases involve children under age five, Matt was diagnosed in 2009 after graduating from college. As the cancer progressed, he was forced to use a wheelchair.

According to Dr. Ken DeSantes, pediatric oncologist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, the MIBG attaches to radioactive iodine and then goes after the cancerous cells.

“After being administered to the patient, MIBG is selectively absorbed by neuroblastoma cells, bringing with it large doses of radioactive iodine which kill the cancer,” he says. “The accumulation of radiation within the tumor is much greater than the accumulation within normal organs, so the therapy is well tolerated.”

DeSantes was instrumental in bringing the MIBG treatment to American Family Children’s Hospital after seeing how it worked at a children’s hospital in San Francisco.

“We knew we wanted to offer the treatment,” he says. “So we had the luxury of planning for the treatment room at the time the Children’s Hospital was being built in 2007.”

After seven days in the hospital, Matt was discharged and returned home to Minnesota.