These findings appear in a scientific paper published in the June 1998 issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology. One group received radiation treatment to the affected eye before it was removed. The other group had the eye removed without the radiation treatment. Researchers found that, after five years of follow-up study, the radiation treatment had no effect on patients' survival rates.
Radiation therapy is costly and has the potential for side effects.
Unless a survival benefit is shown with further follow-up, it is unlikely doctors will advise it for their patients with large melanoma eye tumors. The type of ocular melanoma studied by researchers was choroidal melanoma, a tumor of the eye that forms from pigmented cells of the choroid, a layer of tissue in the back of the eye. Although it is a rare cancer, choroidal melanoma is the most common primary eye cancer in adults. Many choroidal melanomas enlarge over time and can lead to loss of vision. More importantly, tumors also can spread to other parts of the body and eventually cause death.