UC Davis is the only institution in Northern California to offer a unique treatment for ocular melanoma

The University of California at Davis is now offering surgery and follow-up services to patients receiving proton-beam treatment for ocular melanoma. Previously, Central Valley patients receiving proton-beam treatment at UC Davis had to travel to UC San Francisco for surgery and follow-up.

“The advantage of proton-beam treatment is that you don’t remove the eye,” says Susanna Park, MD, an associate professor of ophthalmology and vision sciences at UC Davis who performs the surgery.

“Also, the radiation can be programmed to treat the eye with minimal damage to surrounding tissue,” and the patient has a better chance of keeping his or her eyesight.

A 90,000-square-foot building is needed to house a proton-beam accelerator. UC Davis is one of only a handful of institutions in the United States to have such a facility, and the only one of its kind in Northern California. The facility is equipped only for use in treating ocular tumors; other facilities are able to treat a range of cancers. And Park is one of only three physicians in Northern California who treat ocular melanomas with UC Davis’ proton-beam accelerator.

Dr. Devron Char, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University, is another one of the three. Char helped to pioneer the procedure in the United States. Patients come from around the world to be treated by him. “Forty percent of people come from offshore,” he says. The procedure costs between $20,000 and $25,000 and is usually covered by insurance.

Before a patient can receive proton-beam treatment, surgery is performed where marker rings are sewn onto the back of the patient’s sclera, the white, protective outer layer of the eyeball. These rings will serve as guideposts for the delivery of the proton beams. Next, the patient is sent to UCSF to be fitted with a face mask and bite block.

A patient’s tumor sample, taken with a fine-needle biopsy, is examined to determine its genetic pattern, and treatment is based on that pattern. Ultrasound is used to build a computer model of the tumor, so that the tumor can be targeted as precisely as possible.

Around 2,500 people are diagnosed with ocular melanoma every year in the United States, according to the Ocular Melanoma Foundation. This equates to about 5 to 7.5 per million people per year. Survival rates for ocular melanoma patients who undergo proton-beam treatment are at least as good if not better than for those who have their eye removed, according to Char.

Michael Bone, a veterinarian in the Sacramento area, was diagnosed with choroidal melanoma earlier this year and was one of the first patients to have surgery done on his eye at UC Davis, in preparation for proton-beam therapy.

Overall, he says his treatment experience was “real simple – very good,” and that he never missed a day of work. He is now six months out from his treatment, and his doctors tell him that his chances of complete recovery are 95 percent.

Researchers at UC Davis Cancer Center and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are working on a prototype of a new-generation proton-beam machine that will be capable of treating cancer anywhere in the body at a fraction of the size and cost of existing full-body machines. They hope to house the first compact proton-beam accelerator at UC Davis Cancer Center.

—By Lisa Winer

Posted on December 4, 2006 06:02 AM