Childhood tumor

Treatment of retinoblastoma

The team that will diagnose and treat retinoblastoma will include several trained physicians, including medical oncologists, surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, ophthalmic pathologists, and geneticists. Together, they offer every possible treatment for retinoblastoma, including:

Intra-arterial chemotherapy

Intravitreal chemotherapy

High-dose chemotherapy combined with stem cell rescue

Proton therapy

Brachytherapy

Laser therapy

Surgical operation

Specialized ocular pathology and tissue collection

Doctors who treat retinoblastoma will tell you that they have three goals, in that order: to save lives. Save your eyes. Save the illusion. To achieve these goals, they may use the following treatments.

chemotherapy

Chemotherapy drugs kill cancer cells, control their growth or relieve symptoms associated with the disease. Chemotherapy may involve a single drug or a combination of two or more drugs, depending on the type of cancer and how fast it is growing.

Retinoblastoma chemotherapy is delivered in one of the following ways:

Intra-arterial: A catheter is inserted into a blood vessel near the groin and then travels throughout the body to the eye, where chemotherapy is delivered directly. This avoids exposing patients to systemic chemotherapy. In some cases, this is the preferred technique for delivering chemotherapy drugs.

Intravenous injection: The drug is injected into a blood vessel and pumped throughout the body.

Intravitreal: Chemotherapy is injected directly into the eye.

Around the eye: Place the medication around the eye.

High-dose chemotherapy combined with stem cell rescue: This is a type of intravenous chemotherapy. This is an option for patients whose cancer has spread to places such as the liver or central nervous system. In order to kill the cancer cells, these patients received large doses of chemotherapy.

As a side effect, the drug also kills the patient's bone marrow, which produces new blood cells.

The patient then receives a stem cell transplant. This process is not meant to kill the cancer, but to restart the body's ability to make blood cells.

Stem cell transplantation (also known as bone marrow transplantation) replaces bone marrow with new, healthy bone marrow stem cells. For retinoblastoma, stem cells are usually extracted from the patient before chemotherapy. After a transplant, patients usually stay in the hospital for 3-4 weeks.

Laser therapy

Doctors can use rubber bands to destroy retinoblastoma tumors. The laser destroys retinoblastoma tumors. Laser treatment is often used after chemotherapy to help kill any remaining cancer cells. This is effective for small tumors that are confined to the retina and do not involve the optic disc or an area near it called the macula, the most important visual part of the retina.

Surgical operation

Removal surgery, or the removal of the eye, occurs when a tumor fills more than half of the eyeball, when other structures of the eye are involved, or when the retina is detached. Children who undergo this procedure are fitted with an artificial eye implant, followed by an artificial eye. Due to advances in testing and treatment, nucleation is no longer used as often as it once was.

cryoablation

Cryoablation, also known as cryotherapy or cryosurgery, uses cold to kill tumor cells. During the procedure, a special probe is inserted into the tumor and then cooled to temperatures well below freezing. A ball of ice forms at the tip of the probe, freezing and destroying cancer tissue. Cryotherapy is less invasive than surgery. It is usually performed as an outpatient procedure.

radiotherapy

Radiation therapy uses powerful, focused beams of energy to kill cancer cells. There are several different radiation therapy techniques. Doctors can use these to pinpoint tumors while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

Radiation therapy for retinoblastoma may include the following:

Brachytherapy: Brachytherapy involves placing small pieces of radioactive material on the patient's body or within the body as close to the tumor as possible. This allows doctors to deliver very high doses of radiation directly to a patient's tumor while limiting radiation exposure to healthy tissue. Also known as plaque therapy, this treatment is used in patients with very small tumors.

Proton therapy: Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy. It uses a different type of energy that allows doctors to target tumors more accurately. This limits damage to nearby healthy tissue and allows for greater doses of radiation.

Proton therapy can be used to treat retinoblastoma that has spread beyond the eyeball.

Life after cancer

After treatment, patients with retinoblastoma should receive regular cancer screening and follow-up care to look for cancer recurrence. This is especially important for people with genetic diseases. These patients have an increased risk of developing a second cancer during their lifetime.