ocular tumors in iran: a 10-year histopathological study on 384 cases of enucleation

background and objective: the frequency and pattern of eye neoplasms differ in various geographic areas. our aim was to determine the distribution of patient age, gender, ocular tumor origin, location and histological type in our region. materials and methods: in this cross-sectional study, all of the 384 eye globe enucleation cases carried out during a 10-year period in farabi medical center in tehran were selected and reviewed. the inflammatory and non-tumoral conditions were excluded. results: out of 350 primary tumors, 344 (98.6%) were malignant including 248 cases of retinoblastomas (70.9%), 76 cases of (21.7%) melanomas and 14 cases of (4%) squamous cell carcinomas. mean ages for these tumors were 3.2, 51 and 64.8 years respectively. overall the tumors were 1.15 times more frequent in left eye and 1.53 times more common in males. out of 248 cases of retinoblastomas, only 12 (4.8%) cases were bilateral (mean age 3.46 years; male to female ratio 1.4:1). some rare cases in our series included a primary non-hodgkin lymphoma of choroid, two choroidal leiomyomas and an adenocarcinoma of the retinal pigment epithelium. conclusion: the overall frequency of the three most common primary malignancies in our series was similar to the reported asian countries but slightly differed with western countries in terms of lower incidence of melanoma here. also bilateral retinoblastoma was less frequent here and occurred in a slightly older age. the actual frequency of metastatic eye tumors could not be evaluated precisely due to lack of systematic autopsy data.