April 5, 2010 
During the high-risk surgery, the patient’s pressure was reduced to marginal levels of life …
Due to the sudden disturbance of vision, 44-year-old woman from Osijek went to an examination in private ophthalmic clinic. The doctor immediately sent her to specialists in the Osijek hospital. She was diagnosed with melanoma in the eye. Tumor, size 16 x 10 millimeters occupied a large part of the interior of the eye whose diameter is 22 millimeters, reports “Večernji list”. The first alarm had inflamed the right, healthy eye before two and a half months. Melanoma of the eye is among the rare and most dangerous tumors.
The patient was immediately after the diagnosis sent to the Hospital Sv. Duh in Zagreb. In the first phase of treatment a radiation of the tumor was done by the brachytherapy procedure. Doctor Nenad Vukojević from Rebro hospital installed a radiation plate to the patient’s eye, on the place where the tumor lies. Tablet radiated the tumor for eight days. But that was not enough. A month later a surgery was performed, for the first time in Croatian medicine, a tumor from the eye was surgically removed.
‘Operation of the endoresection of the melanoma choroid was performed by the technique of pars plana vitrectomy.The surgery was needed to be carefully planned because of the additional requirement in such an extensive and specific intervention is that the patient, during surgery which lasted five hours, must be lead and maintained in a state of markedly decreased blood pressure to border of life and death. Choroid, where the tumor was found was full of blood vessels and there was a great danger of explosion of bleeding”, said her physician, surgeon dr. Borna Šarić.
Croatian patients with tumors of the eye, which needed surgical treatment, have been for decades treated abroad, mostly in Essen and Berlin, which costs the state 20,000 euros per patient. ‘Thanks to the achieved technical standards and trained personnel, we decided to treat this young woman in Croatia, which became our first patient with melanoma of the eye that is subjected to a very complex and extremely delicate operation. Otherwise, such operations are working in a small number of countries at European level, in only four to five centers. Cooperation between the two hospitals, two medical teams, one from the Hospital Sv.Duh and another from KBC Rebro, the patient’s eye was rescued, and about a dozen days after surgery there were signs of vision”, added doctor Šarić, who’s been dealing with cancer for twenty years.
Taken from: www.dnevnik.hr