Liverpool Ocular Oncology Website goes Live

Joanna Jones and the team at Room 58 have unveiled eyetumour.com, an exciting new website created for the Liverpool Ocular Oncology Centre.

The brand new site provides an abundance of useful information for patients and relatives alike. The user-friendly site includes plenty of pictures and diagrams to help demonstrate the various conditions and treatments our clients may encounter.

Topics explored on the site include: Ocular tumours and their treatment; a Who's Who; and a section detailing how we work behind the scenes. The new site also includes a glossary of medical terms for quick reference.

Advice is also available for patients visiting our centre, including directions to the hospital, the care pathway, available facilities, what to bring, and how to keep in touch after being discharged from our care.

Aside from the main site itself, we have included a variety of links to healthcare sites as well as other sites which might be of use to our patients such as the Automobile Association Route Planner and Liverpool Tourist Office.

The new discussion forum on the site makes it possible for patients to communicate with our staff and with each other. This forum is moderated by our specialist nurse, and has been specifically designed to make it easier for patients to share their experiences and to have any questions they may have answered.

A link to our departmental 'blog' ensures that all our latest developments are published for viewing without delay. This facility also helps us to add new information in response to the feedback we receive from our visitors.

We know that patients and their relatives will benefit greatly from our new website. We are very grateful to Joanna Jones and her team at Room 58 for this valuable gift for the centre and our patients.

Award for Ocular Oncology Service

Professor Damato attended the 6th International Conference on the Adjuvant Therapy of Malignant Melanoma, which was held in Stockholm on the 15-17 June 2006. This was an international conference, with delegates from all over the world.

He organized a session on ocular melanomas and delivered a lecture on Intraocular Melanoma. He also organized a session with lectures on metastatic melanoma, differences between ocular and cutaneous melanoma, and conjunctival melanoma, which were given by Sebastian Eskelin (Finland), Charlotta All-Eriksson (Sweden) and Jacob Pe'er (Israel).

The message given to the conference by Professor Damato was that some intraocular melanomas tend to disseminate from the eye to the liver and other parts of the body before the ocular tumour is even detected and treated, so that the best hopes for improving any chances of survival are with systemic treatment (i.e. tablets or injections). It is therefore necessary to identify patients having a life-threatening tumour so that these individuals can receive any preventative treatment as early as possible, before signs of tumour spread become apparent.

The best way of identifying dangerous tumours currently relies on tumour cytogenetics (i.e. checking genetic mutations occurring in the tumour itself). There may be scope for obtaining a tumour sample (i.e. performing a biopsy) in all patients, including those treated with radiotherapy. This is currently being considered by Professor Damato.

No systemic adjuvant therapy is yet available for intraocular melanoma, but methods for identifying patients with a high-grade (i.e. very malignant) melanoma should nevertheless be developed so that any promising new drugs can be evaluated without delay. Such evaluation would be more feasible and would be completed more quickly if only patients with 'bad melanomas' were enrolled in clinical studies, but this requires safe and effective biopsy as well as a suitable genetic test.

A simple method for biopsying intraocular tumours has been developed in Liverpool (already reported in this blog). We also have greater experience with clinical routine clinical cytogenetic studies than other ocular oncology centres.

The Organizing Committee and Faculty presented Professor Damato a prestigious award, which read: 'In Recognition of His Outstanding Contribution to Research and Clinical Care Development of Ocular Melanoma'. Professor Damato accepted this prize on behalf of the Ocular Oncology Team, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, and the National Specialist Commissioning Advisory Group (NSCAG).

Publication of article improving survival statistics

Our article entitled On the use of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms for survival analysis was published today in electronic form in (Biosystems, 2006, March) by Setzkorn, C, Taktak AF and Damato BE.

Dr Setzkorn has developed an original way to analyse survival statistics using data from patients treated for intraocular melanoma. This work should enhance the prediction of the chances of survival of patients with this tumour. This in turn will help us to reassure those with a good prognosis. It will also help us to refer patients to an oncologist if they are considered to have an aggressive disease.

Biopsy article published in Ophthalmology

Our article entitled Transretinal choroidal tumor biopsy with a 25-gauge vitrector was published in Ophthalmology. (Sen J, Groenewald C, Hiscott PS, Smith PA, Damato BE; 2006 Jun;113(6):1028-31).

This paper reports our experience with a new 'mini-vacuum cleaner', which provides a good tumour specimen from the back of the eye, quickly and safely. Other methods use a fine needle, which gives only a small specimen, or standard sized equipment, which require more complicated surgery.

Our method not only improves diagnosis but also creates opportunities for finding out whether or not a melanoma is life-threatening.

Guide for Practitioners published

This week we mailed copies of our new book The Liverpool Ocular Oncology Centre: A Guide for Practitioners to any eye consultant who referred patients to our centre since January 2003. Around 400 specialists have sent us at least one patient, during this time. The consultants are based in hospitals all over the UK and Ireland. The guide itself has 62 pages and is illustrated in full colour.

Our guide will improve collaboration between our centre and the referring hospital. It advises on how to refer patients, participate in shared-care, and perform check-ups after patients are discharged from our hospital in Liverpool. Our guide also describes a wide range of ocular tumours and how these are diagnosed and treated.

The guide will enhance patient care by reducing delays and helping general eye specialists to manage patients with an ocular tumour more efficiently.

The publication of this guide was funded entirely from patient donations, through the Eye Tumour Research Fund.

Krakow Conference - Intraocular Melanoma Treatment

Professor Damato was invited to an ocular oncology conference in Krakow, Poland. He delivered an invited lecture entitled Recent advances in the treatment of intraocular melanoma. Several case reports were presented to show successful conservation of the eye and vision in patients who only a few years ago would have needed to have the eye removed.

Most of the treatments described were developed in Liverpool. These include techniques such as tumour biopsy using the 25-gauge vitrectomy system, proton beam radiotherapy of iris melanoma, ruthenium plaque radiotherapy with an eccentrically placed plaque, trans-scleral local resection, and trans-retinal endoresection.