New treatment modalities for uveal melanoma

The management of uveal melanoma has evolved tremendously for the past century, and more recently there is a trend toward more focal conservative treatment. Enucleation is still performed for large uveal melanoma when there is no hope for useful vision with conservative treatment. Plaque radiotherapy is particularly recommended for medium- or small-sized uveal melanoma. Special custom-designed plaque radiotherapy can be used for iris, ciliary body, or juxtapapillary choroidal melanoma. Charged-particle irradiation constitutes an alternative treatment modality for posterior uveal melanoma. However, charged-particle therapy is limited by the availability of appropriate therapeutic facilities. Local tumor resection using lamellar sclerouvectomy is mainly suitable for selected iris, ciliary body, or anterior choroidal tumors with smaller basal dimension and greater thickness. Ablative laser photocoagulation is indicated for very selected cases of small posterior choroidal uveal melanoma. Combined plaque radiotherapy with indirect ophthalmoscope laser therapy appears to be a more effective local tumor treatment plan than plaque radiotherapy alone. Transpupillary thermotherapy is the newest modality used as primary treatment or as complementary method to brachytherapy for treatment of selected choroidal melanomas. Hyperthermia with infrared irradiation below photocoagulation level produces tumor necrosis with few ocular complications. Based on the published ophthalmic literature, it seems that enucleation carries the same survival prognosis as each of the conservative treatment modalities.