Finding Your Way with Ocular Melanoma

This episode is all about Navigating Ocular Melanoma - The Guided Group Program, which starts January 5, 2024. I am thrilled to do this work, because I believe that helping you change your approach to ocular melanoma will improve your mind, body and spirit, AND change the course of your cancer and health. This guided live program will provide the framework to 1) Turn you into an expert; 2) Give yo...

What can you do to improve your mind, body and spirit? Whether you have ocular melanoma or any other medical condition, there is always something you can do to improve. Everything that you do to improve, will change the trajectory of your health and your life. Listen here to the recording for the Advancing Survival - A Holistic Approach to Ocular Melanoma webinar. You'll learn from: a review of oc...

When does a patient need to have pan-retinal laser photocoagulation (otherwise known as "PRP") after ocular melanoma treatment? PRP laser is an important tool in the treatment of retinal ischemia (the lack of blood flow to areas of the retina) and in the setting of new and abnormal retinal vessels that have grown because of ischemia. In these settings, PRP can prevent the progression of new blood...

Mark your calendars - please join me on Sunday, December 15th at 10:00-11:30AM PST. Register for the webinar below. I will share with you what a holistic approach to ocular melanoma can look like. Holistic means having to do with your whole-person health - mind, body and spirit. Making the greatest strides in your ocular melanoma recovery and health goes beyond focusing on your eyeball alone. Lear...

There is much that is scary and frightening when one discovers that the diagnosis is ocular melanoma. However, there is also a tremendous amount of experience, information and data on almost every aspect of medical decision-making that will come up in your treatmewnt journey. I strongly believe that we must make our decisions based on facts, and never from a place of fear. Fear is an emotion that...

Pain after ocular melanoma treatment may be due to dry eye, late onset inflammation, and from elevated eye pressure from new blood vessels forming in the eye. How do you know you may have dry eye, and how can you treat it? Learn also the symptoms of inflammation and how steroids may be helpful. For people with poor vision and pain, learn how this can be managed and when might be the best instances...

Some people notice the recurrence of white lights and flashing in the treated melanoma eye within a year or so after the radiation treatment. This symptom can be alarming because it often is very similar to the original flashing and white lights that a person may have noticed at the time the ocualr melanoma was diagnosed. It is normal to think that the cancer is coming back.  However, it is not! F...

What causes ocular melanoma? There is nothing you can do to prevent getting ocular melanoma. We know that past trauma, UV exposure and all sorts of environmental hazards or occupations have not been shown to be convincingly related to getting ocular melanoma.  Genetics: some people with more cancers in their family (specifically kidney cancer, ocular melanoma, mesothelioma (lung), prostate or skin...

Getting a fine needle biopsy from an ocular melanoma can reveal information about one's prognosis - whether a person has a low risk or a higher risk of getting spread of the cancer (metastasis) in the future. Regardless of how this result is used, biopsy results provide more information to patients about the nature of their cancer. Performing this "prognostic biopsy" is the standard of care at the...

Early detection of metastasis results in the ability to consider more treatment options for your situation, than if metastasis is discovered late. Preventive abdominal screening scans can allow you to detect metastasis on the earlier side rather than late. Work with an oncologist who is as much of an expert in treating patients with ocular melanoma metastasis as possible, even for simply routine s...

Welcome to my new resource website: seyhart.com/ocularmelanoma ! While I may not be able to serve as everyone's ocular oncologist, I've shared my expertise and years of experience into creating this site to offer accurate, constructive, and up-to-date information to anyone navigating ocular melanoma. I understand that the internet can feel overwhelming, with conflicting or outdated resources, so m...

The uncertainty of not knowing for sure what and when is going to happen to you after an ocular melanoma diagnosis, can be a major issue that patients experience. Not knowing what might happen, when life or death is concerned, can be overwhelming and reduce your quality of life. The phenomenon of anxiety around getting abdominal scans, a term called "scanxiety" is well-recognized in cancer care. W...

You've just been through a brachytherapy plaque surgery - hooray its behind you. Your eye is red, your eyelid is drooping, the eye keeps watering - you are not looking your best. Okay, you know this is temporary. Now its about a month or two later, and things are much better. But there's still some drooping, and there is still some of that scarring of the white of the eye - its not radiation damag...

What is bedside manner? In healthcare as this relates to your doctor, bedside manner refers to how he or she interacts with you - the communication, the attentiontion to detail, and the overall demeaner. Some of us may believe that bedside manner is not important, and that what truly matters in the end is a doctor who is highly experienced and skilled at their craft. However, a doctor who is skill...

Getting a diagnosis of ocular melanoma may be a traumatic and emotional time. The possibility of your cancer being fatal may be the most challenging aspect of your journey. Research shows that people who engage in their disease - learn as much as possible, ask questions, become an expert - do better overall, compared to people who chose to avoid leaning in to their diagnosis. Focus on changing the...

The number one risk factor for the ocular melanoma metastasizing to the liver is the size of the tumor at the time of diagnosis. The larger the size of the ocular melanoma, the higher the risk of metastasis. Early detection and early treatment are imperative to reduce this risk. The second risk factor is the molecular biology of the ocular melanoma that we can obtain from a tumor biopsy. We can te...

Is it possible for vision to improve years later after brachytherapy plaque treatment and radiation side-effects? Yes! This is a phenomenon that is no longer a surprise to me when I hear about vision improvement from my patients. Although we have been told that the radiation will result in vision loss and blindness, it is rarely so devastating as some ocular oncologists make it out to be. The tric...

Intravitreal injections are shots of medicine that go into ("intra-") the eye ball and directly into the vitreous cavity ("vitreal"), the innermost part of the eyeball. There are two main categories of shots: 1) steroids; and 2) Anti-Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) agents. Steroids work best when the eye is inflamed - inflammation is usually transient and can happen within a year or two...

In today's episode, I welcome my friend and colleague of nearly two decades, Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology at UCLA, Dr. Bartosz Chmielowski. I am so grateful to have him as part of our expert team. Dr. Chmielowski discusses the challenges of metastasis, the differences between imaging modalities for screening, and his preferences. The landscape of treating ocular melanoma...

Radiation damage is an irreversible, non-fixable, and un-curable state. Thankfully this is exactly what we need to destroy cancer. However, when healthy tissues get damaged by radiation, there is nothing we can do that will return the damaged tissue to its original healthy state. In order to prevent radiation retinopathy and damage, there are three things that can be done: 1) Diagnose and treat sm...

Radiation retinopathy occurs when the healthy non-tumor tissue of the retina gets damaged by the radiation that is intended for the ocular melanoma undergoing treatment. Although we have nothing that will "cure" or "eliminate" radiation retinopathy, we do have helpful treatments for radiation retinopathy that I will discuss in this episode. Radiation damage happens at the time of treatment. Radiat...

Radiation retinopathy is when the vessels of the retina are damaged because of the side effect of the radiation treatment necessary to kill the ocular melanoma. To kill the ocular melanoma, there is healthy tissue that may be unintentionally affected by the radiation treatment. Because the normal tissues of the retina are not normally rapidly dividing like the cancer cells are, we often do not see...

What are the side effects of ocular radiation treatment? Whether one is undergoing brachytherapy plaque, external beam radiotherapy, gamma knife radiotherapy or proton beam radiotherapy, there may be nearby healthy tissues that are affected by the radiation that is intended for killing the melanoma itself. What does this mean for the health of the eye, surrounding tissues and vision?  Welcome to F...

We continue our topic of Tumor Biopsy, with a focus on some different techniques, how the biopsy is performed and also addressing safety of tumor biopsy. In summary, my preferred approach is first through the sclera behind where the tumor is sitting and then second preferred technique is with direct visualization of the tumor as the last step of performing a vitrectomy. Getting real-time feedback...

Why would one need to get a biopsy in the setting of ocular melanoma? I discuss some reasons why: 1) To get pathology in cases where a clinical diagnosis is not clear. 2) To get information on cancer prognosis, to better understand the potential risk of developing metastasis. 3) To gain access to future clinical trials where your molecular prognostication may be required for study entry. Pathology...