Too much sun can cause skin cancer and the same thing can happen to your eyes. About 2,400 people were diagnosed with eye cancer last year.
Many treatments for the disease are invasive and can damage the eye even more. But one woman and her doctor have pushed eye cancer treatment to the next level.
Not long ago, Dove Karn thought she would lose most of her eyesight. She first knew something was wrong when flashes of light appeared. ''They looked like lightning and they had a circular pattern around them."
Dr. Paul Finger broke the news that changed her life: She had a tumor in the back of her eye. More bad news … treatment could be almost as damaging as the cancer.
''He told me that even with that, it would probably take care of the tumor, but it would make me have a very sick eye and in the end i may have to have my eye removed."
Traditional treatment is complete removal of the eye. Doctor Finger places a disk, or plaque, made of gold behind the eye to deliver radiation. Since Dove's tumor surrounded the optic nerve -- the direct line from the back of her eye to her brain --
Dr. Finger had to think creatively. He developed a custom-made, slotted plaque to fit around dove's tumor and nerve. The new invention was named Finger's slotted plaque after its creator. For Dove, the device was more valuable than gold -- it was a means of getting life-saving therapy.
Thanks to the creation of super-sized plaques for large tumors and Dr. Finger's slotted plaques, fewer than eight-percent of patients with the most common type of primary eye cancer require removal of the eye. Dr. Finger's plaques stay in the eye for about a week.
