Dr. Clarissa Johnson peels back the curtain on the unique challenges for pediatric patients with sickle cell disease, the risks involved with transitioning to adult care, and clinical trials and research that offer hope for a brighter future here and around the world.
Meet the speaker
Dr. Clarissa Johnson
Related Information
Sickle Cell Disease
Hematology
Hematology and Oncology
Clinical Research
Transcript
00:00:04
Host: Hello and welcome to Cook Children’s Doc Talk. We're here today talking with Dr. Clarissa Johnson about sickle cell disease and the advanced treatments and research she leads here at Cook Children’s. Dr. Johnson is a member of Cook Children’s hematology and oncology team and the lead physician of the Sickle Cell program. She is actively involved in research Cook Children’s and has written extensively on the unique medical care needs an infection risks of children with sickle cell disease. In addition to her work at Cook Children’s Dr. Johnson has also made many medical mission trips to hospitals and clinics in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Those trips help to provide her with an even more intense drive to find a cure and she puts that drive into action every day in the compassionate care she provides to patients and families at Cook Children’s. Dr. Johnson, welcome and thank you for being here today.
00:00:55
Dr. Johnson: Thank you for having me.
00:00:58
Host: Can you start off by telling us a little about Cook Children's Sickle Cell Program?
00:01:02
Dr. Johnson: The program at Cook Children’s was established many years ago when the hematology oncology division was started at this institution by Dr. Paul Bowman. It has evolved over the years and by the time that I started working here in 2009 it was a well established program. I became the program director a short time after that and since that time have worked really to bring more research trials to our patient population and to have a cohesive management of care. Our team includes a nurse, a therapist. a social worker, and then three physicians who primarily take care of the patients here, of which I am one. We follow about four hundred patients from across the state of Texas, so that includes patients in West Texas, north of us in the Wichita Falls area, now Tyler in East Texas, south of us in Waco and then of course here in the immediate DFW area, which is probably where most of our patients come from.
00:02:01
Host: Can you tell us maybe a little bit about the types of advanced research trials we’re part of.
00:02:06
Dr. Johnson: Over the years Cook Children’s has been invited to participate in several trials, including trials on iron chelation in children, that is something that we use in children with sickle cell who need transfusion therapy and overtime may have iron levels build up in your body because of that, so we participate in that trial. We have collaborated with the group over in Dallas with some trials to look at the effect of something called a patent foramen ovale, or a small hole in the heart in terms of its influence on the risk of stroke in children with sickle cell disease. And in recent years we've been part...
