Choroidal melanomas with a collar-button configuration: response pattern after iodine 125 brachytherapy

To describe a distinctive type of postbrachytherapy response pattern among choroidal melanomas with a collar-button configuration.

Ninety-three consecutive eyes with choroidal melanoma treated with iodine I 125 brachytherapy before 1991 were reviewed to identify melanomas with a collar-button configuration. Postbrachytherapy response patterns of these melanomas were reviewed.

Thirty-four of the 93 eyes contained tumors with a collar-button configuration. Sixteen (47%) of the 34 eyes demonstrated a postbrachytherapy response pattern characterized by persistence of the collar-button, while the body of the tumor demonstrated shrinkage. During follow-up, the color of the collar-button configuration changed from light brown to dark chocolate (16 [47%] of 34 eyes). Subsequently, irregularly clumped, darkly pigmented debris was observed to slough from the surface of the collar-button configuration into the vitreous cavity (7 [21%] of 34 eyes). The debris was comprised largely of pigment-laden macrophages in 1 eye in which a vitrectomy was performed. In another eye, histopathologic study of spherical clusters of intravitreal brown-colored debris identified malignant melanoma cells.

A distinctive postbrachytherapy regression pattern of melanoma with a collar-button configuration has been identified. The main body of the tumor shrinks, whereas the collar-button configuration persists, appears more prominent, gradually changes to a darker color, and may then shed pigmented debris into the vitreous cavity. This pigmented debris may be composed of pigment-laden macrophages and/or melanoma cells. Clinical characteristics of the vitreous debris may help distinguish malignant invasion by melanoma cells from infiltration by nonmalignant debris and macrophages.