The October issue of EyeWorld magazine featured an in-depth discussion with Dr. Paul Finger on ocular melanoma.

Many patients worry about skin melanoma metastasizing to the eye, but Dr. Finger said this isn’t the norm.

“I’ve been an ocular oncologist for a long time now. One of the things that comes up over and over again is that a patient will come in with a history of skin melanoma, and he was told that he has a nevus or a freckle in his eye, and he’s really panicked that this is a metastatic lesion.”

However, what Dr. Finger has found is that almost all eye melanomas start in the eye. In contrast, skin melanomas rarely spread to the eye. When they do, the patient usually has a history of spread to other organs. In his review of the subject, Dr. Finger has noted distinct signs when melanoma metastasizes to the eye:

“There are certain things that happen in the eye when it’s a metastasis versus a primary eye melanoma that would tip you off to thinking that it’s from somewhere else and that you might want to look other places to see that it’s metastatic.”

Dr. Finger goes on to cover some of the treatment options, and how they differ between primary melanoma and metastasized tumors. He said patients with ocular primary melanoma, also known as choroidal melanoma, usually fare far better. You can read the entire article HERE.