Overview

Melanoma is a type of cancer that develops in the cells that produce melanin — the pigment that gives your skin its color. Your eyes also have melanin-producing cells and can develop melanoma. Eye melanoma is also called ocular melanoma.

Most eye melanomas form in the part of the eye you can't see when looking in a mirror. This makes eye melanoma difficult to detect. In addition, eye melanoma typically doesn't cause early signs or symptoms.

Treatment is available for eye melanomas. Treatment for some small eye melanomas may not interfere with your vision. However, treatment for large eye melanomas typically causes some vision loss.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com

Symptoms

Eye melanoma may not cause signs and symptoms. When they do occur, signs and symptoms of eye melanoma can include:

• A growing dark spot on the iris
• A sensation of flashing lights
• A change in the shape of the dark circle (pupil) at the center of your eye
• Poor or blurry vision in one eye
• Loss of peripheral vision
• Sensation of flashes and specks of dust in your vision (floaters)

When to see a doctor

Make an appointment with your doctor if you have any signs or symptoms that worry you. Sudden changes in your vision signal an emergency, so seek immediate care in those situations.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com

Causes

It's not clear what causes eye melanoma, also called ocular melanoma.

Doctors know that eye melanoma occurs when errors develop in the DNA of healthy eye cells. The DNA errors tell the cells to grow and multiply out of control, so the mutated cells go on living when they would normally die. The mutated cells accumulate in the eye and form an eye melanoma.

Where eye melanoma occurs

Eye melanoma most commonly develops in the cells of the uvea, the vascular layer of your eye sandwiched between the retina, the thin layer of tissue that lines the back inner wall of your eyeball, and the white of your eye (sclera).

Eye melanoma can occur in the front part of the uvea (iris and ciliary body) or in the back part of the uvea (choroid layer).

Eye melanoma can also occur on the outermost layer on the front of the eye (conjunctiva), in the socket that surrounds the eyeball and on the eyelid, though these types of eye melanoma are very rare.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com

Diagnosis

To diagnose eye melanoma, your doctor may recommend:

• Eye exam. Your doctor will examine the outside of your eye, looking for enlarged blood vessels that can indicate a tumor inside your eye. Then, with the help of instruments, your doctor will look inside your eye.

  One method, called ophthalmoscopy, uses lenses and a bright light mounted on your doctor's forehead — a bit like a miner's lamp. Another method, called slit-lamp biomicroscopy, uses a microscope that produces an intense beam of light to illuminate the interior of your eye.

• Eye ultrasound. An eye ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves from a hand-held, wand-like apparatus called a transducer to produce images of your eye. The transducer is placed on your closed eyelid or on the front surface of your eye.

• Imaging of the blood vessels in and around the tumor (angiogram). During an angiogram of your eye, a colored dye is injected into a vein in your arm. The dye travels to the blood vessels in your eye.

  A camera with special filters to detect the dye takes flash pictures every few seconds for several minutes.

• Removing a sample of suspicious tissue for testing. In some cases, your doctor may recommend a procedure to remove a sample of tissue (biopsy) from your eye.

  To remove the sample, a thin needle is inserted into your eye and used to extract suspicious tissue. The tissue is tested in a laboratory to determine whether it contains eye melanoma cells.

  An eye biopsy isn't usually necessary to diagnose eye melanoma.

Determining whether cancer has spread

Your doctor may also recommend additional tests and procedures to determine whether the melanoma has spread (metastasized) to other parts of your body. Tests may include:

• Blood tests to measure liver function
• Chest X-ray
• Computerized tomography (CT) scan
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• Abdominal ultrasound

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com

Complications

Complications of eye melanoma may include:

• Increasing pressure within the eye (glaucoma). A growing eye melanoma may cause glaucoma. Signs and symptoms of glaucoma may include eye pain and redness, as well as blurry vision.

• Vision loss. Large eye melanomas often cause vision loss in the affected eye and can cause complications, such as retinal detachment, that also cause vision loss.

  Small eye melanomas can cause some vision loss if they occur in critical parts of the eye. You may have difficulty seeing in the center of your vision or on the side. Very advanced eye melanomas can cause complete vision loss.

• Eye melanoma that spreads beyond the eye. Eye melanoma can spread outside of the eye and to distant areas of the body, including the liver, lungs and bones.

Coping and support

Coping with vision changes

If your cancer treatment causes total loss of vision in one eye, such as happens when an eye is removed, it's still possible to do most things you were able to do with two working eyes. But it may take a few months to adjust to your new vision.

Having only one eye affects your ability to judge distance. And it may be more difficult to be aware of things around you, especially things occurring on the side without vision.

Ask your doctor for a referral to a support group or an occupational therapist, who can help devise strategies for coping with and adjusting to your altered vision.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com

Risk factors

Risk factors for primary melanoma of the eye include:

• Light eye color. People with blue eyes or green eyes have a greater risk of melanoma of the eye.
• Being white. White people have a greater risk of eye melanoma than do people of other races.
• Increasing age. The risk of eye melanoma increases with age.

• Certain inherited skin disorders. A condition called dysplastic nevus syndrome, which causes abnormal moles, may increase your risk of developing melanoma on your skin and in your eye.

  In addition, people with abnormal skin pigmentation involving the eyelids and adjacent tissues and increased pigmentation on their uvea — known as ocular melanocytosis — also have an increased risk of developing eye melanoma.

• Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. There's some evidence that exposure to UV light, such as light from the sun or from tanning beds, may increase the risk of eye melanoma.

Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com