Choroidal Metastasis

Choroidal metastasis is a seed of cancer that started in a cancer elsewhere in the body and spread to the eye by bloodflow. The majority of choroidal metastases originate from breast cancer in women and lung cancer in men. About 25% of patients who present to the eye doctor with eye metastasis have no known history of systemic cancer and are later found to have a cancer in the body. 

Choroidal metastases are painless but can cause visual loss. They usually appear as one or more yellow tumors in the back of the eye. The diagnosis is made by recognition of the typical features of this cancer using indirect ophthalmoscopy and also other in office testing with ultrasonography, fluorescein angiography, optical coherence tomography, and autofluorescence. 

The management of choroidal metastasis depends on how sick the patient is with the main cancer. If the patient is not sick, then plaque radiation or external radiation might be used. If the patient is sick from cancer elsewhere in the body, then treatment with chemotherapy might be given.