Prognosis for patients with metastatic conjunctival melanoma

Abstract

Conjunctival melanoma is a rare ocular cancer, and despite recent advances in the early detection of metastasis and the availability of new drugs such as immune checkpoint inhibitors and Braf-directed targeted therapy that have demonstrated efficacy for the treatment of metastatic conjunctival melanoma,1 it remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Jain et al report on 29 patients with metastatic conjunctival melanoma.2 These 29 patients represent about 10% of the 288 patients with conjunctival melanoma included in this retrospective review based on data pooled from 10 international centres from a wide geographic area of the world. ‘Metastasis’ is defined as ‘M1’ per the American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) definition and as such only addresses distant (hematogenous) metastasis. In other words, the stated primary objective of the report is to focus on patients who developed hematogenous distant metastasis although the authors provide some information regarding nodal metastasis in the same group of patients. Among the 29 patients with systemic metastasis, five (17%) were found at the time of the initial presentation, while 24 (83%) were …