Inaugural NCCN Guidelines Designated for Uveal Melanoma

Source: Targeted Oncology, May 2018

A new set of National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines have been created for the diagnosis and management of uveal melanoma. During the 2018 NCCN Annual Conference, a member of the NCCN Melanoma Subcommittee, Christopher A. Barker, MD, presented the inaugural guidelines as “the first pathway-based guidelines” to be developed for the disease.¹
The unique biological characteristics of uveal melanoma necessitated a need for its own set of guidelines, separate from the guidelines for cutaneous melanoma, explained Barker, the director of clinical investigation in the Department of Radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, during an interview with Targeted Oncology. Local treatment for uveal melanoma, differing from cutaneous melanoma, consists of globe-preserving therapies or enucleation.
“Ocular or uveal melanoma is genetically and biologically a very distinct form of melanoma that has very little overlap with cutaneous melanoma,” agreed Daniel G. Coit, MD, a surgical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the chair of the NCCN Uveal Melanoma Subcommittee, in an interview with Targeted Oncology. “What we have wanted to do for years is to codify the treatment [of patients with uveal melanoma] so that practitioners would have a consistent management algorithm.”