IJ Radiology
The most common ocular neoplasm in children is retinoblastoma which can spreads to the brain via the optic nerve in untreated patients. The most common treatment is enucleation, but modern eye-preserving therapies may save the globe. In advanced stages, globe-preserving strategies are often insufficient to prevent enucleation and direct infusion of chemotherapeutic agents into the ophthalmic artery may be required to control the tumor.
In this presentation, we aim to report our experience about the safety and efficacy of intra-ophthalmic artery melphalan (IAM) injection in the treatment of retinoblastoma.
Twenty-three patients were male (50%). Mean weight was 11.2 + 3.9 Kg (420) and mean height was 89.3 + 16.2 cm (65110). The disease was in the right eye in 19 patients (41.3%), left eye in 23 patients (50%) and bilateral in 3 patients (6.5%). The ophthalmic arteries were successfully cannulated except in one patient. There were not severe systemic side effects in our patients. Vasospasm happened in one patient. Canulization failed in one patient out of 29 (3.4%).
Intra-arterial melphalan injection into the ophthalmic artery is an effective and safe therapeutic modality for retinoblastoma.
© 2014, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
Purchasing Reprints
Author(s):
