Vascular Anomalies Clinic

Diagnosis and treatment of vascular anomalies

Our Vascular Anomalies Clinic (VAC) provides convenient, patient-centered consultations from the entire team of doctors; we work together to help patients and their families navigate what can be a dizzying array of possibilities and choices.

The VAC sees both children and adults suffering from vascular malformations or vascular tumors. The clinic’s exceptional team of specialists includes dermatologists, surgeons (otolaryngologists, plastic surgeons and general surgeons), radiologists, interventional radiologists, hematologists, oncologists, pathologists and geneticists. The team meets at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford every two weeks to review challenging cases and to provide patients with comprehensive interdisciplinary care. Assembling doctors from all relevant specialties in one place at one time is key to the clinic’s success, both in properly diagnosing vascular anomalies and in charting the personalized treatment course for each patient.

“A significant percentage of the patients who are referred to our center have been given incorrect prior diagnoses,” says dermatologist Joyce Teng, MD, PhD, director of the clinic. “We work with the most experienced diagnostic radiologists at Stanford, which allows us to evaluate the patients’ vascular anomalies thoroughly and deliver their treatments appropriately,” she says. “By combining our expertise and efforts, we can get the diagnosis right, develop an optimized treatment plan and achieve better outcomes.”