Outcomes and impact of multidisciplinary team care on immunologic and hemato-oncologic pediatric patients

Introduction: Immunologic and hemato-oncologic disorders in the pediatric population repre-sent an interrelated and complex group of conditions whose approach, diagnosis, and manage-ment could be difficult. Multidisciplinary teams have been proved beneficial in treating such complexities. Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study at a tertiary hospital in Madrid, Spain, which is a pediatric immunology and onco-hematology referral center. We included all patients of multidisciplinary outpatient consultation, comprising a working group of pediatric oncohematologists and immunologists, between April 2016 and December 2019. Epidemiologic, clinical, and laboratory data were collected. We analyzed these data and established a rela-tionship between age and findings of final diagnosis as well as variance on diagnoses prior to their multidisciplinary assessment and number of visits to the consultation. Results: In all, 93 children and adolescents were included in this study. Laboratory abnormali-ties were the most frequent reason for being referred to our unit (87.2%); 78% of children had a previously diagnosed comorbidity. Before starting follow-up in the multidisciplinary consultation, 14% of patients were diagnosed, and after the study by the multidisciplinary team, the final diag-nosis was reached in 58.1% of patients. No correlation was discovered between final diagnosis and gender (P = 0.29), age (biserial correlation coefficient, r = 0.036, P = 0.70), and number of visits (P = 0.07). Conclusion: A multidisciplinary approach to immunologic, hematologic, and oncologic pedi-atric diseases is feasible. It can be a powerful and useful tool for diagnosis and treatment, especially in complex pediatric patients. (c) 2023 Codon Publications. Published by Codon Publications.