Finding treatment for your stage of eye cancer is very important if you want to keep the growth from spreading to other portions of your body.
Each type of eye cancer and stage of eye cancer has its own form of treatment, so it is very important that you get a proper diagnosis of your condition before seeking treatment.
Sometimes it is best to get two or three alternative opinions before handling the diagnosis you receive. It’s also to understand the symptoms of eye cancer so it can be caught early on.
Common Treatment Options
For the iris tumors, the best form of treatment is a biopsy. The iris tumor can show symptoms of a brown spot by the iris of the eye. Biopsy is when a needle-like instrument is inserted into the cornea of the eye to pierce the tumor and aspirate cells. This is effective 100 percent of the time at some clinics, while others have a lower rate of success.
Another treatment that can be used is enucleation surgery, which is the removal of the eye. The doctor removes the eye of the patient, allowing the tumor to be spotted and removed from the eye. It is then placed back into the socket of the patient, but the vision is permanently lost in that eye.
Over time, most patients are able to do the same things as before they lost their eye. This procedure is mostly used with large-sized tumors found in the eye because the amount of radiation needed to remove the tumor is too much for the eye to stand.
Other Treatment Options
Eye and vision sparing radiation therapy may be used to treat intraocular cancer. Two radiation types are plaque radiotherapy and external beam. The main one used is the plaque brachytherapy; it is used for choroidal melanoma and delivers closely to the tumor growths. It is used alone – it is sometimes known as a radiation implant or radioactive source. The external beam is used for retinoblastoma, which is an eye cancer that develops during childhood. It is also used for choroidal melanoma and metastatic tumors.
Last, there is systematic chemotherapy; this is the use of eye cancer treatment drugs. These drugs are used to treat benign ocular tumors, which can be formed from inflammation. The use of this method has cured cancers and extended lives. It can be used as an alternative to surgery and radiation.
