Retinoblastoma

The Cancer of the Retina

Retinoblastoma is the cancer of the retina.

It's a tumor that is malignant in nature.

The illness victimizes only the children and that too, only under 6 years of age!

Human body has a gene named RB in all its cells.

Its function is to control the growth of the cell and thus suppress a tumor, if any, from growing uninhibited.

What happens in the retina cancer is that a cell of the growing retina develops a mutation in its RB gene.

The cell starts growing uninhibited and turns cancerous.

As happens with other forms of cancer too, heredity does seem to play its role.

But then there are so many of the case histories available in the archives that show not even the remotest hereditary connection of the patient to any of the victims to the disease.

And the heredity is responsible only up to a 50% chance for its carrier of developing the mutation and contracting the disease.

Retinoblastoma may affect only one eye or it may affect the both.

It may start turning the pupil white and end up in blindness.

It may also spread to the eye socket or to the optic nerve and the brain.

Apart from the pupil turning white, the eyes may appear to have developed a squint as well.

The sclera turns red and the eye pains too.

Retinoblastoma affects the vision as well.

The iris may change in color, with two different hues in the two eyes!

A proper eye exam is conducted through MRI and ultrasound scans of the eye and the head in order to ascertain the diagnosis of retinoblastoma beyond any shade of doubt.

If the size of the tumor is small, laser surgery is sufficient to do the job.

But if it has already spread beyond the eye, radiation therapy or chemotherapy or a combination of both remain the only alternative left.

In rare cases, it may also become necessary to remove the eye in order to stop the spread of the tumor to the neighboring organs.

If the tumor has not yet spread beyond the eye, the prognosis of saving the victim's life becomes almost 100% with the removal of the eye in the worst case!

But if the tumor has already spread around to the other organs, the prognosis falls down to a much lower percentage depending on what the spread is like!

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