In one case the primary tumor was never identified. Fine-needle aspiration biopsy of the iris lesion helped to establish the diagnosis in 11 cases. Treatment with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or both, achieved local tumor control in all patients. The overall mean survival was 20 months and the median survival was 13 months after diagnosis of the iris metastasis. Iris metastasis can show a spectrum of clinical variations, but its features are generally distinctive enough to differentiate it from other intraocular neoplasms and inflammations.
Treatment consists of chemotherapy, which was sometimes combined with ocular irradiation.
The visual prognosis was good but the systemic prognosis was generally poor. TI - Endogenous fluorescence of ocular malignant melanomas. The fluorescence of the normal choroid is rather dark, the normal sclera exhibits blue fluorescence and the RPE bright yellow fluorescence due to deposits of lipofuscin. In choroidal melanoma, the lipofuscin granulae at the level of the retinal pigment epithelium are cleaved off above the tumour and broken up into small remnants. The fluorescence intensity emitted from the tumour is rather low which agrees with previous findings on skin melanomas.