Abstract :
Since the modern protocols of chemoreduction1 and local treatments of regressed retinoblastoma (RB) has been proposed and in the developed countries efforts have been made to salvage and preserve the diseased eye, the protocols have found way and being applied in the developing countries, but for what prices? In this issue of the Iranian Journal of Ophthalmology (IrJO) (Pages: 17-24) Naseripour and coworkers have presented their 10 years experience with RB from the ocular oncology center of Iran Medical School . They have emphasized that 7.9% of their patients were presented with proptosis and 51% had extraocular extension of the tumor. I was tempted to review the RB registry of Farabi Eye Hospital of Tehran Medical School from 1980 to 2002 to get an overlook on the conditions of our RB patients during that period. 558 RB cases have been hospitalized during that period which included 735 diseased eyes. 67.4% of cases were unilateral, 27.8% were bilateral, and 4.8% were confirmed familial cases, five of them unilateral. The mean delay in diagnosis and treatment (enucleation, exentration, irradiation, chemotherapy, and local treatments) of each group was 4.7± 6.1 m , 7.6± 10.3 m , 16.5± 29.3 m , respectively. 9.6% (N=71 eyes) of our RB patients were presented with proptosis, 8.3% (N=61) of the eyes had advanced glaucoma, 48.2% (N=353) of the eyes were in stage V of Reese-Ellsworth, 1.8% (n=13) eyes were phthisic, 1.8% (N=13) had the brain involved and 5.8% (N=33) had far metastases. Our pathologists reported 20.7% (N=152) cases of extension of RB to optic nerve and 9.1% (N=67) of orbital involvement
