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New treatments in retinoblastoma preserve eyes and vision
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ATLANTA — Therapeutic trends in treating malignant retinoblastoma are designed to preserve eyes and vision, Ralph C. Eagle Jr., MD, said in the Zimmerman Lecture here.
"Retinoblastoma is a cancer success story," Dr. Eagle said at the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting. In the United States and developed countries, survival is approaching 100%. Currently, secondary cancers are the leading cause of death in patients with retinoblastoma.
Therapy has moved away from external beam radiation therapy, which can be disfiguring and cause secondary soft tissue sarcoma in the field of radiation, and has moved toward chemotherapy and chemoreduction, which shrinks the tumor and allows the use of focal treatments termed "consolidation." Focal treatments can be with transpupillary thermotherapy, radioactive plaque brachytherapy and subconjunctival chemotherapy.
Other treatments on the horizon include intra-arterial chemotherapy and gene therapy, Dr. Eagle said.