Can A Child's Photograph Show Eye Cancer?

Posting Date: 03/16/1999

E-mail question: The other day, you described the plight of Hunter Tylo?s daughter, whose rare form of eye cancer was discovered because her eyes did not reflect red in a photo flash. Would you say more? My five-month-old?s eyes always flash white in the photos.

Dr. Dean: We?ll try to put a photo on the Web site so people can see what this looks like. Yes, we have saved some kid's lives by discovering the cancer this way.

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If you take a photograph of a kid and one eye reflects red and one reflects white, go to the doctor immediately. This could be cancer of the eye. It could also be a cataract, or something else. But the message you need to get is that it?s never normal.

One woman called to say that after hearing my program, she took her child to a doctor along with a picture where one of the kid's eyes showed white and the other showed red. The ophthalmologist took a cursory look in the child's eyes and found no problem. The mother called me about this, and I said, ?Go to another doctor.?

She went to another doctor who dilated the pupil, and sure enough, the kid had eye cancer. The first doctor did not dilate her pupil, which is inappropriate. When we last talked to the mother, her child was being treated in a hospital.