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Newborn child's eye diagnosed with 6 cancerous eye tumours in Birmingham

Birmingham, Oct 3: Nine-week-old Romero, born to Curtis and Leonie Norville, has 'ghastly white reflection' in his left eye. Doctors have diagnosed it to be six eye tumours, reports Daily Mail. Alarm bells immediately started

PTI Updated on: October 03, 2012 19:33 IST





The couple first spotted something was wrong at the end of May.

‘Romero is our first child so we were taking lots of photos with a camera phone,' said Mr Norville.

‘Sometimes you get red eye in the photos but this looked almost like a hole in his eye.

‘We went to the GP who said the eye wasn't reflecting light and referred us to Birmingham Children's Hospital.'

The infant was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a malignant tumour that starts in the retina, the light sensitive lining of the eye.

The condition, which is inherited in around two in five cases, affects around 50 children in the UK each year, generally under the age of five.

If caught soon enough, the chances of being cured are around 95 per cent.

Romero was immediately started on a course of chemotherapy and has had six-hour sessions every month for the past four months.  

The tumour in his left eye has shrunk by a third and the smaller tumours in his other eye have gone following regular laser treatment.  

Mr Norville, who, along with his wife is now campaigning to help raise £4million for the hospital's Children's Cancer Centre Appeal, added: ‘Romero is incredibly resilient. He is very happy, jolly and playful.'

Paediatric oncologist Dr Helen Jenkinson said the challenge of treating bilateral retinoblastoma was to try and salvage as much vision as possible.  

She added: ‘We would expect with Romero that he will make a full recovery, we would expect to cure him and I hope that he will have relatively normal vision when he is older.  

‘He has continued to grow and thrive throughout his treatment and he looks fantastic now. We are delighted with his progress.'
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