“Advanced Retinoblastoma” is one of the deadly cancers of eyes and affects children most. It becomes necessary very often to remove their eyes surgically. This enucleation can now be avoided with a new ‘interventional radiology treatment’.
This treatment is a result of specific research study concluded recently and presented at the 33rd annual meeting of the “Society of Interventional Radiology”. Retinoblastoma begins in the retina and caused by a typical gene mutation occurring one in every fifteen to sixteen thousand births every year. This mutation of genes happen in single eye cell normally and slowly grows in to a tumor. Exact reason of this mutation is yet not known to the scientists. However, if not treated timely the tumor may spread to the brain also as the optic nerve is directly connected with brain. This is fatal in its nature for children.
Until now there existed no effective treatment of advanced retinoblastoma. To save the body and life only option was to remove the affected eye. This new interventional treatment involves direct drug delivery to through the ophthalmic artery. Once being successful in this another large dose of cancer killing drug “Melphalan” can also be introduced in the body with intravenous chemotherapy. “It allows many children to keep their eyes and in some cases restores vision”, says Dr. Pierre Gobin, Professor of Radiology and Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell medical Center in New York City.
The research study involved 21 patients who were suffering from advanced retinoblastoma and traditional enucleation was the only possible treatment for these patients. Patients who had been followed up properly and were cured with this treatment accounted for almost 50 percent while remaining ones showed significant improvements in their vision. Improvement in the vision largely depends on the size of tumor and the duration passed before starting the interventional radiology treatment. This treatment helps in keeping the eye in place and this condition is far better than having prosthesis.
Removing one eye in case of advanced retinoblastoma will not affect retaining vision with the other eye. In this sense it is a life saving treatment. But in cases where both the eyes are affected with advanced retinoblastoma and where it was diagnosed at an age of three years the problem becomes a little complex because such younger children do not understand and do not complain about the loss of vision in just one eye. Tumor spreads fast till the white discoloration of the pupils comes in to notice and the other eye also gets affected.
Interventional radiology used moving X-rays for threading catheter up the femoral artery and advances it to the ophthalmic artery. Finally the radiologist injects the drug. In a period of three weeks the tumor starts shrinking and this is visible clearly.
Intravenous chemotherapy has not been found very effective as not more than 1% of this reaches up to the eye. On the other hand direct drug delivery to the affected eye becomes more effective and curative with saving the other eye from spreading the tumor. Interventional treatment has also been observed to be effective in some cases where a considerable recovery of vision was noticed. This treatment is effective even in cases where both the eyes are affected with bilateral retinoblastoma and vision was reported to be lost completely.
Radiologists are hopeful about the future of interventional treatment and feel that it will help in treating advanced tumors and would help patients get rid of traditional chemotherapy and radiation therapy. This experimental treatment has minimal side effects on the patients, according to the radiologists.
