Looking after the eyes of your children is very important and a common symptom that can appear is Retinoblastoma, and you can usually tell if this is developing by looking at photographs and noting any difference in the appearance of the eyes.


Do you know what Retinoblastoma actually is?

This is not that rare a condition and generally affects 1 in 20,000 births, and if detected early this condition can be treated with great success. It is thought that only half of the cases of Retinoblastoma are actually inherited, so if this is the case, then you need to pay extra attention when it comes to your children.

What happens is that a tumour stares develop behind one of the eyes and in some rare cases in can happen behind both eyes. In some extreme cases the eyes do need to be removed but as mentioned this is very rare, and the treatment can be cured if detected early enough.


So what are the symptoms?

Given that a lot of parents do not actually know what to look for it can be very difficult for many parents to actually to know what to look for. Generally the most common symptom is an abnormal appearance in the eyes, and this can be noticed in photographs. Any difference in the appearance of the eyes should be a sign that something is not right and you should visit your doctor asap.


So what treatments are available?

There are many treatments that are available that can cure Retinoblastoma, but what is important is early detection of the disease itself, and many cases, complete and total vision is repaired. But such success does very depend on the size of the eye and how much the tumour has spread.

Some of the treatments that can be performed include the following:

Chemotherapy – this normally involves injecting drugs in to the body in order to kill of the tumour and in the case of a child, this is done directly in to the fluid that surrounds the brain.

Laser Therapy – this is a non- evasive treatment and involves a shining a strong laser beam through the pupil.

Beam radiotherapy – normally used when chemotherapy has not performed. Generally the child is exposed to a certain level of radiation over say 5 days a week, and this happens for normally a month after which the tumour has decreased in size.

Surgery – this option is only used of the tumour has caused a lot of damage or the tumour itself has reached a certain size. But this is only considered as a last resort if the life of the child is considered at risk.