Original articleUveal Melanoma: Trends in Incidence, Treatment, and Survival
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
The National Cancer Institute SEER Public Use CD-ROM was used to calculate the age-adjusted incidence, trends in treatment, and 5-year relative survival of uveal melanoma from 1973 to 2008.11 Calculation of incidence rates involved a 2-step process. First, age-specific rates were calculated using census estimates for the population and the 36-year period of time studied (thus adjusting for population increases). Second, these age-specific rates were age-adjusted to a “standard” population and
Results
There were 131 723 cases of melanoma reported in the SEER database over the 36-year period between 1973 and 2008. Of all melanoma cases, 3.8% were considered to be ocular/adnexal melanoma. Of these, a total of 4070 cases (81.4%) were classified as uveal melanoma (i.e., site coded as retina, choroid, ciliary body, or iris) comprising 3.1% of all melanoma cases. A total of 8.5% were from a nonspecified site, and the remaining 10.1% were from sites including conjunctiva, cornea, orbit, or other
Discussion
In the current study, the average age-adjusted incidence of uveal melanoma remained stable with 5.1 cases per million population over the 36-year study period. An increasing proportion of patients were treated by radiation alone, and a corresponding decrease was observed in the number of tumors treated with surgery or enucleation. Despite changing trends in treatment, the 5-year relative survival rate (∼81.6%) remained unchanged.
The present analysis uses the SEER program database, which is
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Manuscript no. 2010-1480.
Supported by a Falk Trust grant and a Research to Prevent Blindness Challenge Grant, Department of Ophthalmology, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.
Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.