RESEARCH ARTICLE Assessment of the effect o

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground Although a rare disease, uveal melanoma of the eye is the most common primary intraocular malignancy in adults, with an incidence rate of up to 8 per 1,000,000 person years (age-standardised, world standard) in Europe [1,2] and the fatality rate is high despite modern treatment modalities. Bergman et al. reported an observed survival after 5 and 10 years of 60 % and 43%, respectively. The relative survival, taken as the estimate of the probability of death due to uveal melanoma was 70 % after 5 years (68 % in men and 72 % in women) and 59 % after 10 years (58 % in men and 61 % in women), respectively [3]. In the European Cancer Registry (EUROCARE)–based study of survival and care of patients with cancer, which in-cluded data from 67 cancer registries with a combined population of 100 million persons in 22 European coun-tries, the 5-year relative uveal melanoma survival range