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Beware of the signs your body is sending you. A 5-year-old girl had an eye problem… which turned out to be a rare and aggressive cancer. Find out what should alert you.
While the whole family was on vacation, a mother noticed a subtle change in her 3-year-old daughter’s eyes. This detail prompted her to take her daughter to the doctor when she returned from vacation. According to the diagnosis, the little girl suffers from a rare eye cancer. Discover this child’s story and the signs to watch for!
An unusual sign that should lead to consultation
During their family vacation, the young mother noticed that one of her daughter’s eyes, usually brown in color, had turned green. This was the first sign that worried her. A few days later, when the family returned from vacation, she noticed an unusual white glow in her daughter’s eyes. This was the second sign, which then prompted her to consult an optician.
After performing some tests on the little girl’s eye, the doctor made the diagnosis: the child had retinoblastoma, a rare type of cancer that affects the eye.
Retinoblastoma: what is it?
This type of eye cancer usually affects very young children under the age of five. It starts as a tumor that grows in the tissues of the retina and, if left unchecked, spreads throughout the body, starting in the brain. The disease can be caused by a defective gene inherited from parents or can occur spontaneously in one or both eyes.
Retinoblastoma is considered a rare cancer since each year, 60 children are diagnosed in France and 300 in the United States. Since it is often detected early, 98% of children with the disease are successfully treated in France.
This serious disease can affect one eye (unilateral tumor in 60% of cases) or both eyes (bilateral tumors in 40% of cases). The Curie Institute is the reference center in France for the management of this retinal cancer.
Symptoms of this cancer include: a very dilated pupil, an unusual white reflection in the pupil (as in the little girl’s case), a red or inflamed eye, poor vision… These are fairly subtle symptoms that generally do not bother children too much. This makes the diagnosis more difficult to make.
Several types of treatments depending on the severity of the cancer
The choice of treatment depends on several factors: whether the cancer affects one or both eyes; how many tumors are detected; where are they located? Depending on these parameters, different treatments can be proposed.
Small tumors can then be treated with laser or freezing.
When they are larger, chemotherapy or surgery is necessary. In the little girl’s case, the tumor was spreading near the front of the eye and causing high pressure inside. The eye therefore had almost no chance of being saved. The only possible treatment was therefore enucleation, which is surgery to remove the eye.
Following the operation and after performing a biopsy of the removed eye, doctors discovered cancer cells in his optic nerve. The child therefore had to undergo “six rounds of intensive chemotherapy and the side effects that go with it” confides his mother to Daily Mail.
After this difficult period, the little girl is in remission. Although she has to have an MRI every three months during her first year of remission, she has been able to resume a normal life and is finally enjoying the things she couldn’t do during chemotherapy. Her emotional parents confide to the Daily Mail: “It’s a huge weight off our shoulders that our little girl has achieved something so great. When people see her now, they don’t even suspect that she’s been through such hard things.”.
The main message to take away from this story? Knowing how to recognize the signs of cancer early enough is crucial to being treated in time. “If you are concerned that your child may have retinoblastoma, see a GP or optician as soon as you can.”.