A Laboratory Evaluation of Enucleation in Treatment of Intraocular Malignant Melanoma

It has been the purpose of this study to evaluate under controlled laboratory conditions the effectiveness of enucleation as a method of treatment of intraocular malignant melanoma. This topic is pertinent because the documented long survival of some humans with malignant melanoma of the eye and the well-known occurrence of delayed metastases have led some clinicians to feel that a patient might not be benefited by prompt enucleation of a melanoma-bearing eye. There has not been an adequate control series of untreated humans, and in the past the experimental approach to this problem has not been possible because a malignant melanoma of the eye has not been produced in laboratory animals. Such a study requires a laboratory animal subject to malignant melanoma arising in its own species. A host-tumor system of Syrian Golden hamsters and transmissible malignant melanoma arising spontaneously in the skin of the Syrian Golden hamster was chosen.