If the cancer comes back only in the eye and is small, the child may have surgery or radiation therapy. If the cancer comes back outside of the eye, the child may receive chemotherapy. Parents may want to consider having their child participate in a clinical trial. A fifth treatment, chemotherapy, is being tested in clinical trials. If a child has a tumor in only one eye and has already lost vision, doctors will typically remove the eye in a surgical procedure called enucleation .
Enucleation is a simple and fairly short operation, and the child can often go home the same day.
An artificial eye can be created to match the child s other eye. In addition to the loss of vision, the removal of the eye will affect the tissue and bone around the eye socket, so that the eye may look sunken. If the child has tumors in both eyes and has already lost vision in both eyes, the doctors will probably want to remove the eyes, particularly if the cancer might spread. However, if there is any vision in either eye and any possibility of saving it, every attempt will be made to preserve it by using chemotherapy or radiation therapy. If a child still has vision in the eye that has the tumor, radiation therapy may destroy or control the cancer and preserve the child s eyesight.