Oral Propranolol Therapy for Infantile Hemangioma: Long-term Follow-up

Abstract

β-blocker therapy is currently the treatment of choice for infantile hemangiomas (IH), albeit with limited data on long-term treatment outcomes. Herein, authors treated 67 IH lesions in 47 patients with oral propranolol at 2 mg/kg/d for a median of 9 mo and followed them up for a median of 48 mo. While no maintenance therapy was required for 18 lesions (26.9%), the rest needed maintenance therapy. Both treatment regimens had comparable efficacy (83.3±23.9% and 92.0±13.8%) but chances of IH recurrence was higher in lesions requiring maintenance therapy. Also, patients treated at ≤5 mo of age had a significantly better response and a lower recurrence rate than patients treated at >5 mo of age (95.0±7.9% vs. 87.0±17.5%, p = 0.05). Authors' experience suggests that longer durations of maintenance therapy offered no added advantage to the overall improvement of IH while treatment initiation at an earlier age showed better improvement and lower recurrence rates.

Keywords: Infantile hemangioma; Long-term treatment outcomes; Propranolol; β-blocker.