Pune: Sanjay was two-year-old when his mother noticed white colour in the pupil of his right eye while clicking his pictures.“It was like the glow in a cat’s eye when caught in the headlights,” Sanjay’s mother said, adding, “Feeling something amiss, I fixed an appointment with my son’s paediatrician.”After giving a careful listening to the mother, the paediatrician advised her to see an ophthalmologist for proper diagnosis of the condition. “The ophthalmologist, after a thorough examination, diagnosed my son with retinoblastoma in his right eye,” she said.Retinoblastoma is a type of eye cancer that commonly affects children below the age of five years. It begins with white blotches in one or both eyes. Although life-threatening, most children can survive if it is detected early, experts said.“We see approximately 20-30 patients of newly diagnosed retinoblastoma every year. The number is increasing with every passing year,” Sonal Chaugule, an eye cancer expert working with HV Desai Eye Hospital, told TOI.Chaugule’s patients range from the age of four months to six years. “While the survival rate for retinoblastoma is over 95% in the developed countries, it is 40-75% in developing nations like India,” she said. A combination of poverty, illiteracy, alternative systems of medicine, lack of awareness, delay in seeking medical attention and lack of access to healthcare resources are reasons for this low rate, Chaugule added.If diagnosis and treatment is delayed, the disease tends to progress to advanced stages. “Studies have shown that the treatment ensures that 95% of the children are saved from death, over 90% have their eye/s intact and over 85% have their vision protected in cases of intraocular retinoblastoma. However, for extraocular/orbital disease, 30-50% children are reported to survive after receiving proper treatment,” Chaugule added.The disease is considered cured if the patient does not show signs of recurrence for five years after completing the treatment. “Studies have shown that recurrence rate in children diagnosed to have intraocular tumour can be between 15-45%,” eye surgeon Col Mandan Deshpande said.Eye surgeon Aditya Kelkar of National Institute of Ophthalmology said, “I have been seeing a patient who was diagnosed with retinoblastoma when he was just three-year-old. Today, he is 18. With prompt treatment, even the vision of his eye with retinoblastoma could be saved.”

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