Child to Have Laser Surgery at UCI to Erase Birthmark

A 2-year-old girl from Ecuador will undergo an hourlong laser treatment to remove a disfiguring birthmark from her face at UC Irvine next week, and the brief surgery is likely to change her life, a relative said Friday.

For Daniela Maldonado, who will undergo treatment at UCI’s Beckman Laser Institute on Tuesday, the state-of-the-art procedure “is pretty much a miracle,” said the girl’s aunt, Joy Maldonado of La Crescenta.

“If the mark is not removed, life will be hard for Daniela when she goes to school,” Maldonado said. “Children can be cruel, but parents can be more cruel. They believe the birthmark is a disease and they keep their children away.”

Maldonado and her husband, Romulo, learned of the treatment shortly after Daniela was born and have been saving money for the surgery and transportation costs ever since. Officials at the Beckman Institute, one of only a few clinics in the country that performs the delicate procedure on children, have not yet determined the cost of Daniela’s treatment.

The operation, which is performed under general anesthetic at a cost of $2,100 an hour, may be performed at a lower cost for Daniela because her family has traveled so far, according to Dr. Michael Berns, director of the institute and a professor of surgery at UCI.

Daniela arrived from Ecuador with her mother, Elvira, earlier this week. Because visa approval was delayed, her father, Eugenio, is not expected to arrive until Tuesday, shortly after the planned treatment by Dr. Adrianna Schreibner, associate clinical professor of surgery at UCI.

The procedure involves the use of two or more lasers to trace and seal off blood vessels which cause the birthmark just under the surface of the skin, said Schreibner, who was reached Friday in Vancouver, Canada. The pinpoint focus of the surgery, which takes four times longer than treatment with a wide-beam laser, greatly reduces scarring and skin discoloration.

“The procedure is more difficult on children because they are growing and the skin is finer” than in adults, Schreibner said. “But it is also easier because the blood vessels are also smaller.”

Schreibner said she prefers to treat children before they begin school because “once they are subjected to comments by peers, that is when the real trauma starts. It is only a collection of vessels, and only discoloration on the skin. But because it is on the face and because they have to face the world every day, it is truly a disfigurement.”

The 2-year-old does not yet seem to be aware of the deep red stain that extends from her left ear to her chin and down to her chest, Maldonado said.

“We have been told there is an 80% chance of improvement,” the aunt said. “Those are very good odds. If there is even a slight improvement, it would be very good.”

Maldonado, whose husband is the brother of Daniela’s father, said that no comparable treatment is available in Ecuador, where the middle-class family lives in the mountain city of Cuenca and owns a retail hardware business.