Choroidal nevi and melanoma doubling times and implications for delays in treatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The prognostic implications of delaying treatment for primary uveal melanoma remain debated. We evaluate the impact of choroidal nevi and melanoma doubling times on metastatic death incidence and compare this impact across different tumor sizes. A literature search in PubMed and Web of Science targeted studies published after 1980 that quantified growth rates for choroidal or ciliochoroidal melanomas or nevi based on serial imaging found 199 melanomas and 87 growing nevi from 5 studies. In a random effects model, the estimated average volume doubling time was 360 days across all patients, with doubling times of 717, 421, and 307 days for small, medium, and large melanomas, respectively, and 6392 days for growing nevi. A mixed-effects model estimated that the 10-year incidence of metastatic death increases by 0.3, 1.8, and 4.0 percentage points every month a small, medium, and large melanoma remains untreated. Similar results were produced using two independent sources for survival data. These findings suggest that choroidal melanoma growth follows a super-exponential curve, with larger tumors exhibiting shorter doubling times. Based on these growth rates, delaying definitive treatment increases the risk of metastatic death by nearly zero to several percentage points per month, depending on tumor size.