Objective: To report on conservation of eyes with choroidal melanoma with a multimodality approach to treatment.
Design: Prospective, noncomparative, interventional case series.
Participants: All 1632 patients with choroidal melanoma treated at a single center between 1993 and 2002.
Intervention: Primary enucleation (35%), brachytherapy (31.3%), proton beam radiotherapy (16.7%), transscleral local resection (11.0%), endoresection (3.7%), transpupillary thermotherapy (2.5%), and photocoagulation (0.1%).
Main outcome measures: Primary and secondary enucleation.
Results: Logistic regression showed the main predictive factors for primary enucleation to be: age more than 60 years (odds ratio [OR], 2.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8%-3.2%); reduced visual acuity (OR, 2.5; 95% CI, 1.9%-3.2%); posterior extension close to or involving the optic disc and fovea (OR, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.2%-2.4%); circumferential spread around the ciliary body, iris, or angle (OR, 3.1; 95% CI, 1.8%-5.5%); basal tumor diameter (OR, 3.5; 95% CI, 2.4%-5.0%); and tumor height (OR, 6.3; 95% CI, 4.5%-8.9%). After conservative treatment, the actuarial rate of secondary enucleation was 11.1% at 5 years (95% CI, 8.6%-13.6%). Cox multivariate analysis indicated the factors independently predicting secondary enucleation as: nasal/midline tumor location (risk ratio [RR], 2.6; 95% CI, 1.6%-4.4%); disc involvement (RR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.2%-4.1%); tumor diameter (RR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.0%-1.5%); and tumor thickness (RR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.5%-2.1%).
Conclusions: With a multimodality approach to treatment, 65% of patients underwent conservative treatment, and of them, 89% retained their eye at 5 years, with success depending on tumor diameter, tumor thickness, disc involvement, and coronal location.