Our department treats all malignant diseases in children and adolescents, including malignant bone marrow diseases and myelodysplastic syndromes, in accordance with the guidelines of the Society for Paediatric Oncology.
This also includes the performance of autologous stem cell transplants and innovative therapeutic procedures such as cytokine therapy and immunotherapy.
Furthermore, innovative therapeutic procedures with molecularly orientated therapy, new drugs and antibodies are carried out. The clinic is involved in national and international studies to test new therapeutic procedures.
Our clinic is a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center Ulm (CCCU), an oncological centre of excellence funded by German Cancer Aid, and is represented on the CCCU board by Prof. Debatin.
Some of the innovative therapies are carried out together with stem cell transplantation at our clinic. We have also developed special therapy programmes for therapy-refractory tumours, such as the RIST therapy protocol. Increasingly, the treatment of refractory diseases for which there are no established clinical trials is supported by molecular pathological and molecular genetic diagnostics.

 

The oncology ward is located on the 2nd floor of the new clinic building. There is space for a total of twelve beds in eleven patient rooms. The rooms are equipped with a bathroom and television.
In the centre of the ward is the ward base, from which the nursing staff can quickly reach all rooms. Lumbar and bone marrow punctures and other procedures are performed under short anaesthesia in the operating theatre. Thanks to generous donations, the central lounge area on the ward was redesigned in 2014 and our art therapy room was refurbished.
The oncology day clinic is located on the same level, directly adjacent to the ward. As it is important to us to provide our patients with as much outpatient care as possible, numerous chemotherapies and diagnostic measures are carried out here on a day-case basis. The close proximity of these closely interlinked areas enables good co-operation.

 

Treatment in paediatric haematology is fundamentally interdisciplinary, especially in the treatment of solid tumours. All the necessary disciplines are available at Ulm University Hospital and we cooperate closely with paediatric surgery, radiology, nuclear medicine, neurosurgery, trauma surgery, orthopaedics, radiotherapy and transfusion medicine.
All patients are regularly discussed in the CCCU's interdisciplinary tumour board. The clinic actively participates in the reference assessment by the reference centres of the Society for Paediatric Haematology and Oncology (GPOH).

 

Patients with non-malignant congenital and acquired blood disorders are treated in the "Haematology" department. These primarily include the spectrum of congenital and acquired anaemia, neutropenia and thrombocytopenia, but also very rare diseases that are associated with an increase in red blood cells and/or platelets, such as congenital erythrocytosis, polycythaemia vera or thrombocytosis.
Patients are treated as outpatients in the weekly haematology outpatient clinic or as inpatients or day patients in the haemato-oncology day clinic or in other inpatient areas of the clinic.

The haematology department acts as a regional centre for these generally rare diseases with a wide catchment area from the Alb to Lake Constance. Common diseases include hereditary spherocytosis and immune thrombocytopenia. A supra-regional task, which includes patients from all over Germany, exists above all in the area of haemoglobin diseases, which is a traditional focus of the Ulm Clinic for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The basis for this is, among other things, the haematology laboratory under the direction of Prof. Dr. Holger Cario, which has acted as a national reference laboratory for decades. In the haematology department, patients with thalassaemia major and intermedia as well as patients with sickle cell disease have been clinically treated in recent years. One area of outstanding expertise is the diagnosis and treatment of secondary iron overload.
Congenital erythrocytosis is an extremely rare group of diseases. Patients with these diseases come from all regions of Germany for counselling and co-care. Europe-wide networking within the COST MPN&MPNr EuroNet and the European Congenital Erythrocytosis (ECE) Consortium forms the basis for clinical and scientific work on these diseases. In 2013, guidelines on the diagnostic procedure for children and adolescents with erythrocytosis were drawn up and published under our leadership as part of this collaboration.
In addition to the direct care of patients on site, extensive telephone and written advice is provided to paediatric and internal medicine colleagues at national and international level. Within the hospital, there is close cooperation with the Department of Internal Medicine III (Haematology-Oncology), the Institute for Transfusion Medicine and the Centre for Rare Diseases at Ulm University Hospital, including participation in its board.