Dr. Patel grew up in Texas and studied at the University of Texas at Arlington. In 1996, he graduated as a member of the Gold Key International Optometric Honor Society with a doctor of optometry degree from the University of Houston. Dr. Patel completed a residency in Hospital Based and Geriatric Eye Care at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. During his residency, Dr. Patel served as a clinical instructor to interns from Pacific University and the New England College of Optometry. Dr. Patel has provided hours of clinical procedures workshops for both the Oregon and Alberta, Canada Optometric Associations. He has volunteered his skills on an eye care team in Thailand, and the Special Olympics programs in Oregon. Dr. Patel also serves as a clinical examiner for the National Boards in Optometry, as a consultant to the Portland VA Medical Center, and Adjunct Faculty for the Pacific University College of Optometry.
DR. RAJ PATEL: Hi. I'm Dr. Raj Patel, optometrist at Vancouver Contact Lens & Vision Clinic here in Vancouver, Washington and I'd like to talk to you a little bit about eye cancer. Cancer of the eye in uncommon but we can see it and it can affect the outer parts of the eye, such as the eyelid, and the lid tissue is made up of muscles skin and nerves. Very common eye cancer that's found along the lid margin is called squamous cell carcinoma. Now you can also have, unfortunately, cancer inside the eye and if it's inside the eye, those are known as intraocular cancers, and the most common intraocular cancer in adults are melanomas and lymphomas. The most common eye cancer in children is an eye cancer called retinoblastoma and that starts in the cells in the back of the eye called the retina. Cancer can also spread to the eye from other parts of the body. So, how is it diagnosed? Well, it's typically diagnosed during your eye exam; unfortunately, most of the time, these cancers don't have signs or symptoms. What doctors are looking for are moles or freckles along the lids, the white part of the eye or inside the eye, and those freckles or moles go by a medical term called nevus or nevi. And so, we're looking for these nevi and if we find them, doctors will typically measure them, photograph them, and watch them very regularly, typically annually over time. And what we're looking for, what doctors are looking for is a change in their size and shape. Now if we see spots or moles on the front end which is where the lids are, there, doctors are typically looking for things that are irregular so irregular margins, things that are raised or appear to have kind of a bleeding or kind of an ulcer and centered like a volcano. And so, if you happen to notice these things along the eye lid margin or the skin between your eye lid and the brow area, then you should immediately seek out the care of your family doctor, your eye doctor so that they can take a look at it and refer you in the right direction. On the other hand, there are some cancers that are internal to the eye that can cause eye symptoms and those symptoms can include seeing spots of light, the sensation of flashing lights, or blurry vision in one eye, or pain in one eye. Some cancer that affect the iris, the colored part of the eye may have symptoms or signs of a spot, a kind of a dark spot on the iris that gets larger over time. And so those are all things to keep track of and measured by your eye doctor and if you have these findings, you make sure and go back and have them checked regularly. There are some risk factors for developing eye cancer and the most common one is eye color. Darker colored eyes are less likely to develop eye cancer and there is a little bit of a genetic disposition. The way that these things are treated are typically by way of virtue of either surgery, radiation therapy, or freezing or heating and even occasionally laser therapy is used to treat it. So, the take home message is that if you're an individual that has some of those symptoms or these freckles along the front part of your eye that you've not noticed before, you should seek out immediate medical care and have an eye doctor take a look at them and determine what are the courses with those.
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