Melanoma Nomogram Our Melanoma Nomogram is designed to help physicians and patients decide which treatment approach will result in the greatest benefit 
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Research to Detect Micrometastases
For early detection of possible spread of disease before surgery, Memorial Sloan-Kettering researchers are assessing techniques to detect individual melanoma cells that may have broken away from a primary tumor.
One such technique -- called reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR -- can detect one melanoma cell in 10 million circulating blood cells. The clinical significance of finding these cells in the bloodstream is being investigated.
Treatment of Ocular Melanoma
Uveal Melanomas
Memorial Sloan-Kettering doctors participated in a nationwide NIH-sponsored multicenter, prospective, randomized trial for uveal melanoma treatment. The trial demonstrated that with medium-sized melanomas, survival rates for treatment using radioactive plaques (brachytherapy) are essentially identical to rates for treatment using surgical removal of the eye (enucleation).
Our team of ophthalmic oncologists, radiation oncologists, and radiation physicists create individual plaques for each patient. The plaques are placed on the eye in an operating room while the patient is under monitored anesthesia care (MAC), which provides local or regional anesthesia while the patient receives sedatives to relax them during the operation.
Patients remain in the hospital for four nights, then have a second procedure to remove the radioactive plaque, again under MAC anesthesia. Patients are able to return home that same day. More than 90 percent of these patients are able to retain their eye.
Conjunctival Tumors
At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, we treat conjunctival melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma using combinations of micro-surgery, topical chemotherapy and cryotherapy (freezing). We recently introduced the use of a special laser that allows destruction of some of these cancers without surgery.
Orbital Tumors
Most tumors in the orbit, including lacrimal gland tumors, are benign and many require no treatment. For those benign tumors that require surgery, Memorial Sloan-Kettering uses a multidisciplinary approach, utilizing the skills of ophthalmic oncologists, head and neck surgeons, and neurosurgeons.
Malignant cancers do occur in the orbit, both primarily and secondarily. Among the more common tumors are lacrimal gland tumors (benign and malignant), hemangiomas, neurolemmoma, rhabdomyosarcomas and meningiomas. At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, we use combinations of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy for treatment of these cancers.