What is the Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study?
The Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study, or COMS for short, is a set of clinical trials designed to evaluate the treatments doctors use for their patients with choroidal melanoma. The goal of each clinical trial is to learn which therapy of those under evaluation leads to the longest lifespan for patients with choroidal melanoma. Because both survival and the type of therapy available depend on the size of the tumor, treatments for medium tumors are being evaluated separately from treatments for large and small tumors. The quality of life of patients with medium choroidal melanoma is also being assessed. Patients are interviewed by telephone before enrolling in the COMS and several times after treatment. COMS clinical trials are funded by the National Eye Institute and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health of the United States, and are being conducted at more than 40 medical centers in the United States and Canada. Important information collected about the
