Added: 02/08/2006 |
Eye Cancer - A Serious Disease That Attacks ThousandsHuman eye is a very complex and precise instrument. Eye consists of many different parts and all these parts can be affected by eye cancer. All the eye cancer types can be primary (formed in the eye) and secondary (in this case eye cancer comes from another part of the body - most usual cancers that form secondary eye cancer are breast cancer and lung cancer).
Detailed studies among people suffering from different kinds of eye cancer have shown that there are certain risk factors for this disease. It was proven that people with lighter color of their eyes (people with blue eyes for example) are more likely to get eye cancer (melanoma of the eye). Excessive sun exposure also increases the risk of eye cancer (many doctors believe that bright light like the one of welding can also lead to an eye cancer).
As with any kind of cancer it is much better to discover eye cancer on earlier stage. To do that it is necessary to perform eye check regularly as long as signs of eye cancer can be discovered during these simple checks.
The most usual symptoms of eye cancer are spots in your eyes or decrease in ability to see. Growing dark spot inside the iris can also be a sign of eye cancer. So, if any of these or similar symptoms appear you should see a doctor. At hospital different procedures like ultrasound or computed tomography can be performed to find out whether these symptoms are caused by eye cancer.
If eye cancer is discovered a team of doctors makes a staging of the disease which shows to what extent cancer has developed. After all these procedures they can develop a detailed plan of eye cancer treatment. In fact, modern medicine is very developed in the sector of cancer treatment these days. There are many different techniques and methods that can be used.
The most common procedures in eye cancer treatment are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Special eye surgery is used for treatment of intraocular melanomas (but it cannot be used in case of intraocular lymphoma).
Radiation therapy can be used to increase the effect of surgery or as a separate method of treatment in cases when surgery cannot be applied. Special beams of high energy radiation simply kill cancer cells. But the problem is that normal tissues surrounding cancer area are also damaged by radiation therapy. But unlike the surgery in case of radiation therapy the structure of the eye is not damaged (although there still can be a loss of vision).
Another usual technique is chemotherapy - it can be used for treatment of all kinds of eye cancer. Special drugs are used to slow the division of cancer cell (and eventually to kill them). But this technique is also harmful for the patient because all the tissues in the body are affected by the drugs. But recently special drugs have been developed - they affect only cancer cells. Although this method is still being tested it is very promising.
Today thanks to the latest achievements of technology there is another pretty effective method for treatment of an eye cancer - laser therapy. In that case, cancer cells are burned out by a high-energy laser beam.
Article comments:
No comments for this article yet. Post your comment now!
