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  • What's Your Diagnosis
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Diagnosis: Malignant Melanoma

Lab Animal volume 32, pages 24–25 (2003)Cite this article

Eyelid tumors larger than one third of the eyelid opening require reconstructive surgery. Our experience suggests that this can be unsuccessful in rabbits. We decided that brachytherapy, a form of radiotherapy using small seeds of radioactive material placed on the body or implanted into the tissues, was the most appropriate method of treating this malignant melanoma. Brachytherapy has been the standard treatment for human retinoblastoma since the 1930s, when the British ophthalmologist Henry Stallard devised and refined it5. In the past, oncologists treated human ocular tumors with enucleation, but the current emphasis is on organ preservation, with the aim of sparing visual acuity6. In the management of these tumors, clinicians now frequently use brachy-therapy and particle beam therapy as an alternative to enucleation. Though the technique has remained similar, the isotopes used have evolved (Stallard originally used cobalt-60), and clinicians now use iodine-125 and palladium-103 seeds6,7,8. Using brachytherapy, veterinary ophthalmologists have achieved similar successful results by treating equine periocular tumors with radioactive iridium-192 and gold-198 seeds9,10, and bovine and feline ocular squamous cell carcinomas with gold-198 seeds11,12.

Malignant melanomas are rare in rabbits, and have been reported only five times. Four cases involved the skin, and only one occurred in the eye. Sustmann13 in 1922, and Holtz and Heutgens14 in 1955 reported cutaneous melanoma in German journals. In 1994, Hotchkiss et al.15 reported two cases of cutaneous melanoma in rabbits. In 1926, Brown and Pearce16 described a melanoma in the eye of a 10-month-old male rabbit that they had infected with Treponema pallidum two months previously. The melanoma infiltrated the choroid, iris, and ciliary body. Eyelid melanomas are commonly reported in horses, are generally slow growing, and do not appear to cause metastatic disease17. These tumors are rare in the other veterinary species.

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Figure 2: Hematoxylin and eosin (40X) stained section of a malignant melanoma taken from the eyelid of a six-year-old Boxer dog, illustrating the highly variable histologic pattern of melanomas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanley and Hardman are registered veterinary eye specialists (FACVS Ophthalmology, MACVS Surgery) at Animal Eye Care, 181 Darling Rd., East Malvern, Victoria, 3145, Australia.,

    Robin G. Stanley BVSc & Chloe Hardman BVSc

  2. Brown is an exotic pet veterinarian at Middle Brighton Veterinary Hospital, Victoria, Australia.,

    Narelle Brown BVSc

Authors
  1. Robin G. Stanley BVSc
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  2. Narelle Brown BVSc
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  3. Chloe Hardman BVSc
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Correspondence to Robin G. Stanley BVSc.

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Stanley, R., Brown, N. & Hardman, C. Diagnosis: Malignant Melanoma. Lab Anim 32, 24–25 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/laban0503-24

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