Metastatic uveal melanoma. Pretherapy serum liver enzyme and liver scan abnormalities
L. A. Donoso, D. Berd, J. J. Augsburger, M. J. Mastrangelo and J. A. Shields
The liver was the organ most frequently involved in 50 patients with
primary melanomas of the choroid or ciliary body, who were treated with
enucleation or cobalt plaque radiotherapy and who subsequently developed
systemic metastasis. Forty-seven (94%) of the patients had clinical or
laboratory evidence of liver metastasis. The median survival time following
treatment of the primary choroidal melanoma was 28 months (range, 7.7 to
123.1 months). Results of pretreatment studies, including serum liver
enzyme levels, liver scans, or both, were abnormal in six (12%) of the
patients studied. As a group, the eight patients who died within one year
following ocular surgery had a significantly higher prevalence of
pretreatment laboratory abnormalities. Extraocular extension of the
choroidal melanoma was also present in four (50%) of these eight patients.
Conversely, no patient who survived longer than the median survival period
(28 months) had abnormal pretreatment laboratory findings.
