A clinically useful method for combining gross and microscopic measurements to select high‐risk patients after enucleation for ciliochoroidal melanoma

An objective and reproducible method was devised for estimating the malignant potential of ciliochoroidal melanomas after enucleation. This method requires only a singleroutine microslide from which nucleolar area and largest tumor dimension are measured. Previous studies have shown these measurements to be reproducible and highly correlated with mortality. To demonstrate a practical method for clinical application of these measurementsa Cox statistical model was derived from 200 cases supplied by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The resulting modelwhen applied to 340 cases with known outcome from two independent laboratoriesallowed subdivision of patients into groups that suffered a six‐fold difference in mortality. These results suggest that a central registryby applying this method to histologic slides from around the worldcould provide information useful for the clinical management of patients enucleated for ciliochoroidal melanoma.