CLINICAL AND ECHOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF PATIENTS WITH VARIOUS MORPHOLOGICAL TYPES OF UVEAL MELANOMA
P urpose. To analyze the clinical features, echostructure and hemodynamic characteristics in patients with different cell types of uveal melanoma (UM). Material and methods. This work is based on the examination results of 170 patients with uveal melanoma who underwent enucleation, mean age was 52.9±12.5 years. Group I consisted of 78 patients with spindle cell (SC) UM, Group II - 55 patients with mixed cell (MC) UM and Group III - 37 patients with epithelioid cell (EC) UM. All patients underwent a comprehensive ultrasound investigation. Molecular genetic study was carried out in 30 patients. Results. Dome-shaped UM was noted more frequently in patients with SC type of tumor, and mushroom-shaped and irregular - in EC and MC cell type UM (p=0.004). The lowest densitometric parameters were determined for the SC type of tumor, and for the EC type - the highest densitometric parameters. With MC and EC types of tumors the hypervascular type was more often determined (55.5% and 67.6%, respectively), and with SC the hypovascular type (51.3%) (p = 0.032). Higher blood velocity characteristics (Ved, TAMX) were shown in MC and EC UM compared to SC. Patients with monosomy of chromosome 3 showed the highest densitometrictumor characteristics (p=0.034 for A1) and higher linear Doppler blood flow characteristics in tumor vessels (Vps and TAMX, p=0.041). Conclusion. The identified clinical and echographic differences in different morphological variants of uveal melanoma can be used for preoperative stratification of patients and are an alternative non-invasive prognostic criterion for the vital prognosis of patients of this profile.