Incidence of ocular melanoma in the general population and in glaucoma patients.

Intraocular melanomas are the most common primary ocular malignancy in white people accounting for approximately 70% of all eye malignancies in adults. Most ocular melanomas arise from uveal melanocytes distributed throughout the stroma of the choroid, only 4%–10% of uveal melanomas originate in the iris. Data on the incidence of intraocular melanoma are limited with estimates of incidence rate (IR) reported between 4 and 8 per million per year. Known risk factors include advanced age and white people but there are very few studies describing other potential risk factors for uveal melanoma. We conducted a study using the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) to estimate the incidence rate of ocular melanoma in the general population. As a secondary objective, we investigated whether glaucoma is associated with ocular melanoma.