If a child is diagnosed with retinoblastoma, the doctor will order more tests to determine the size of the tumor and whether it has spread to surrounding tissue or to other parts of the body. This process, called staging, helps the child s doctor to plan treatment. Numerous imaging tests can be done to look for evidence of cancer in internal tissues. Spinal fluid and bone marrow may also be sampled to look for cancer cells in the brain and bone.
Treatment depends on whether the cancer is in one or both eyes.
Radiation therapy to both eyes if there is potential for vision in both eyes. It may be confined to the tissues around the eye, or it may have spread to other parts of the body. Clinical trials testing new combinations of chemotherapy drugs, with or without peripheral stem cell transplantation, and different ways of administrating chemotherapy drugs. It may recur in the eye, the tissues around the eye, or elsewhere in the body. If the cancer comes back only in the eye and is small, the child may have surgery or radiation therapy.