Elliot Hooks

Elliot Hooks is a recurring patient of Miranda Bailey at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. He suffers from bronchial tumors that keep growing back.

Earlier Surgeries
Elliot's bronchial tumors occured for the first time when he was four years old. They removed the tumors, but they reoccured. Ever since, they had to debulk the tumors every 7 to 10 days as they compromised his breathing. Over time, he got used to the regular surgeries and his parents bought a house near the hospital so he didn't need to travel much when another surgery was needed. Leah stated that he had had 312 surgeries, which she thought at first couldn't be correct.

Genome Mapping
To bring a stop to the almost weekly surgeries, Bailey proposed to custom design a drug that would stop the growth of the tumors. To do so, she needed to take a sample of the tumors during another surgery and create a genome map of the tissue, so she could find the specific DNA marker that was responsible for the growth of the tumors. Elliot was extremely happy with the proposal, as it would mean no surgeries ever again.

Outside his room, Leah stood up for herself and Bailey awarded her with allowing her to pull off the entire surgery to collect the samples needed for the genome map. Leah did so successfully with some guidance from Bailey. Later at April's wedding, Bailey showed confidence when she claimed that she would be able to cure Elliot medically if she'd spend a few weeks in her genome lab. ("Get Up, Stand Up")

Notes and Trivia

 * Elliot is the first on-screen patient of Bailey for whom she makes a genome map to medically cure a disease. The other maps she has made were to practice predictive medicine.
 * It seems somewhat incorrect that Elliot has surgeries every 7 to 10 days, as this would mean 52 to 37 surgeries a year. Knowing that he has had 312 surgeries since he was four years old, six to seven years at the utmost have passed since he was four years old, but Elliot is way older than 10 or 11.