Uveal melanoma: Clinical characteristics, treatment and survival in a series of 500 patients ,

Abstract Objective To analyze the clinical features, treatment and survival of uveal melanoma patients diagnosed in a referral Intraocular Tumors Unit over a twenty-year period. Methodology A prospective study was performed including five hundred patients, diagnosed between January 1992 and December 2011. Clinical tumor characteristics and treatment were collected in a database in Microsoft@ Access@. The numeric variables were expressed as means of frequency and standard deviation, and the quantitative variables using frequency tables. Results The mean age of the sample was 62.19 years, with 51.2% females, and 64.2% presented with symptoms. The tumors were small in 31.12% of cases, and large in 23.09%, according to COMS criteria. Hazel green was the iris color in 42.2% of the cases. The initial treatment was episcleral brachytherapy in 42.4% of the total. The overall mortality rate was 17% and 31.3%, and melanoma-related mortality rate was 11.6% and 14.8%, at 5 and 10 years, respectively. Conclusions In the serie studied melanomas were more frequent in women, and a higher proportion of darker irides were observed than in other previous studies. Most of the tumors were diagnosed when they became symptomatic and in the early or medium stages, allowing conservative therapies to be used, with brachytherapy being the predominant treatment. The melanoma-related mortality appeared to be lower than previously data published. However, further studies are required on the factors influencing survival.