There are several different types of eye cancers and eyelid cancers. And these are rare forms of cancer.
When eye cancer affects your eyeball it is referred to as intraocular cancer. Intraocular eye cancer is classified as either primary or secondary. Primary means your cancer originated in the eye. Whereas with secondary, your cancer spread from somewhere else.
Some types of primary eye cancer are:
- melanoma
- lymphoma
- retinoblastoma
- medulloepithelioma
Secondary intraocular cancers occur more often than primary eye cancer. And breast and lung are the cancers that most frequently spread to the eye. Yet, cancer of the prostate, kidney, thyroid, skin, colon, blood or bone marrow are also potential sites of origin.
Eyelid cancer is usually some type of skin cancer, which include:
And sebaceous carcinoma is a fairly common type of eyelid cancer as well. Rhabdomyosarcoma and adnexal lymphoma are two other types of eyelid cancers.
Not all tumors in and around the eye are cancerous, for instance a hemangioma is benign.