Earlier this year, an Illinois mother took a picture of her two sons as they jumped up and down on the family couch. As Julie Fitzgerald lined up the shot of her laughing boys, the camera’s flash fired.
For a moment, Fitzgerald thought she saw something strange in the eyes of her youngest son, Avery. A minute later, looking at the picture on her camera’s screen, her heart sunk.
Calling the photo up, Fitzgerald said she had “a dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I looked and his whole pupil was just white and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
She quickly scheduled an appointment for her son, who was later diagnosed with a retinoblastoma, an aggressive eye cancer that begins in the retina, the sensitive lining inside the eye. Retinoblastomas most commonly affects children by the age of 6, but can occur in adults.
In 2-year-old Avery’s case, it had been growing for about six weeks by the time his mother noticed the warning sign in her photo. Seventy-five percent of his eye was covered in tumors. Caught any later, the cancer could have spread to his brain. As it was, doctors were forced to remove Avery’s right eye before the cancer spread. He’s fine, now.
Cancers of the eye, including retinoblastomas and ocular melanomas “” a cancer that starts in the pigment-producing cells within the eye “” are extremely rare. Only 200-300 children, like Avery, are diagnosed with retinoblastomas each year in the U.S. In most cases, only one eye is affected. One in four children will have tumors in both eyes. Ocular melanomas are slightly less rare, occurring in six people per every million every year (about 2,500 new cases annually), though older adults are more prone.
Even though eye cancers are rare, they’re also among the most aggressive cancers.
“The earlier you find an eye cancer, the more options you have,” said Grant Allen, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Ocular Melanoma Foundation. “If you find it early, you can take steps to have a longer, healthier life. The sooner you find it, the less likely it’s going to spread. That’s the main worry. Once it spreads, the picture isn’t very good.”
In the case of retinoblastomas, the five-year survival rate for afflicted children is roughly 97 percent in cases where the cancer is found before it spreads ““ metastasizes “” to other parts of the body, like the optic nerve and brain, blood and bone marrow. Once that happens, the survival rate is much lower: roughly half.
Ocular melanomas, once they spread to other parts of the body, most often the lymph nodes and liver, is fatal in about half the cases.
Even when caught before metastases, patients will likely have a loss of vision or lose the eye.
“Because they’re so rare, that’s our battle “” to get the word out, so to speak. We do want people to get checked as soon as they realize that something’s not right. There’s nothing we can do at this point, sadly, to prevent eye cancers,” said Allen. “Other cancer groups have campaigns that have active prevention messages. When we talk about ocular melanomas and eye cancers, all we can stress is eye health. About 50 percent of cases are diagnosed by optometrists. Patients notice a flash of light, blurred vision or loss of vision and decide to get it checked out. The earlier they do, the more likely it is to save their vision. Or even their life.”
If you’re concerned about yours or a loved one’s eye health, contact an ophthalmologist (an eye M.D.) to schedule an appointment to discuss.
