ABSTRACT
The medical protocol for treating patients with choroidal melanoma has not yet been fully standardized. Currently, some of the treatment procedures vary in accordance with the tumor’s characteristics, such as its dimensions, pigmentation, and location, in addition to the involvement of the surrounding tissues and other organs that may be affected. Among the treatment modalities, there is increasing interest in transpupillary thermotherapy (TTT) with infrared laser, mainly because it is a noninvasive treatment that can be easily applied. During the TTT procedure, the laser radiation crosses the anterior ocular medium, virtually without absorption, reaching the choroidal melanoma where it heats the tumoral tissue. The rise in temperature, with the final temperature ranging from 45°C to 65°C, is responsible for the thermal damage to the tumor cells, which occurs due to the denaturation of the molecules present in the cells and the extracellular fluid. The thermal damage causes changes in the biological tissue, leading to a whitish coloration. This effect is used as an indicator to stop the laser application. Because laser TTT is not yet a standardized procedure for the treatment of ocular melanomas, the value of the thermal damage function can be used to determine the optimal amount of laser radiation needed to treat such tumors.
