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A six-month-old boy has been diagnosed with a rare eye cancer after his mother noticed something strange while watching her son on the baby monitor.
One night, while Benny’s mother was watching him in his crib, she noticed that one of her son’s eyes seemed completely black and the other looked like a bright light on the screen.
He initially thought the different colored eyes were due to a bug in the baby monitor, but when his grandmother also said his eye looked cloudy in certain light, Benny’s mom took him to see a pediatrician.
After an MRI, doctors The six-month-old boy was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a very rare retinal cancer that usually starts in the back of the eye, most commonly in children.
Benny’s cancer had developed in his eye which looked like a black puddle on the monitor.
Benny was diagnosed with a rare type of eye cancer when he was six months old after this image appeared on his baby monitor. One of his eyes had turned black.
He is now 18 months old and cancer-free thanks to a treatment that involved a tube running up his leg to the back of his eye to deliver chemotherapy directly to the tumor.
Dr. Matthew Dietz, a pediatric oncologist at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital, said parents should watch for similar signs in their children: “Parents should pay attention to photographs, videos and other images of their children in which one eye shines and the other doesn’t.” ‘t.’
Doctors in Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Murray, Utah They were able to cure the cancer and save some of the sight in Benny’s left eye, but his mother, who asked not to be identified, said he still had vision problems.
Speaking of his son’s recovery, he said KUTV: ‘The cancer was detected early.
‘However, now that I look back and know what I’m looking for, I can see the “sparkle” (in Benny’s eyes) from three months old.
“I’d never heard of retinoblastoma before, and if this story somehow comes up when the next concerned parent ‘Googles’ information about their child, then my missing it for three months was worth something to someone else.”
Instead of infusing toxic chemotherapy throughout Benny’s body, doctors treated him by inserting a microcatheter, a tube as thin as a thread, into an artery in his leg and passing it through his body to the tumor in his eye to deliver chemotherapy directly. . in the mass.
Benny received treatments through his catheter once every few weeks for several months.
And although Benny’s mother said her son would be sick for several days after chemotherapy, he always smiled and interacted with his doctors and nurses.
Doctors also wanted to investigate the origin of Benny’s cancer and geneticists discovered that he was missing the retinoblastoma 1 gene, which is not usually seen in children with this cancer.
More extensive genetic sequencing found that the six-month-old baby was missing part of chromosome 13, which is rare and can lead to other medical problems.
Benny, now 18 months old, has been declared cancer-free but must return to hospital every month for checks.
While doctors were able to save his sight in his left eye, he lost some vision and now attends Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind to help him adjust to the change.
His mother also said he faces some developmental delays.
Benny is currently learning to transition to a sit, he said, and is “very afraid to move from a position where he feels very stable.”
Retinoblastoma is rare, but it is the most common childhood eye cancer, with around 300 cases diagnosed each year.
It is most common in babies aged two to three years and the five-year survival rate is 96 percent.
BesidesIt is more common in children because it is triggered by a genetic mutation in a gene related to eye development.
Benny is pictured above in the hospital after treatment. His mother said that he tended to be very sick for a few days after receiving the medication.
Symptoms include a white pupil, cloudy eyes, misaligned eyes that look toward the ears or nose, different colored irises, and a red, swollen eyeball.
Parents of children who develop cancer may suspect a health problem because only one of their child’s eyes would appear red or different in photos.
But doctors fear that with the advent of phone cameras, which can easily filter out these red eyes, many cases will go unnoticed.
Dr. Eric Hansen, an oncologist at the University of Utah Eye Center, said KSL.com: ‘In Benny’s case, we were very lucky… because (a baby monitor) doesn’t have built-in software to eliminate that red reflection.’
He added: “If you notice… any concerns about your eye, talk to your pediatrician; don’t ignore them.”
Doctors say babies are screened for this cancer at birth and then usually between six and 12 months of age in the US.