eye mole

I don't understand what is means to have a mole in my eye. They told me it looks as if it is raised around it. Could you please tell me what it means if it is.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

The most common benign "spot" in the eye is a thing that under the microscope looks like the common freckle or mole on your skin. It occurs in the middle layer of the eye (choroid) and the pathologists call it a choroidal nevus. That's not a term that most people will recognize so to enhance communication many ophthalmologists just say there is a mole or freckle in the eye.

Now to continue the comparison some moles on the skin are very innocent looking and no-one worries about them; others are raised, have irregular borders and uneven pigmentation and are large. When a dermatologist looks at those they raise a danger signal that it might be a malignant melonoma and needs to be removed and biopsied. The eye is the same way. Most eye moles/freckles are the first kind, small, flat, even pigmentation and regular borders. Because the person can't see it all we usually do is tell you about it, sometimes take a picture of it and ask you to come back yearly. At other times the eye mole is big, elevated, irregular in shape and may even detach the retina. Those need special tests to see if its a malignant melanoma of the eye.

JCH III MD Eye Physician and Surgeon