The original search identified 11,857 articles. After removing duplicates, 6,282 titles and abstracts were screened for eligibility, with 37 remaining for a full-text review. Finally, 17 studies were included in the systematic review (Fig. 1).

PRISMA flow diagram. Search 1* = APA Psych Articles, CINAHL Complete, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition, MEDLINE Complete. Total: 11,857 (19/05/2022)

Most of the included studies (15), investigated UM [5, 17, 28, 30, 37, 40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48] with three studies on RB [16, 33, 49]. Among the included articles, one [49] study was carried out in a low- or middle-income country (China) and 16 studies were conducted in high-income countries: the US (9) [16, 17, 28, 30, 33, 40,41,42, 47], Germany (4) [37, 43, 46, 48], Ireland (1) [5], Israel (1) [44], and the Netherlands (1) [45]. In relation to study design, there are ten cohort studies [28, 30, 33, 37, 40, 41, 44,45,46, 48], five cross-sectional studies [5, 16, 17, 47, 49], and two longitudinal studies [42, 43]. The characteristics of the included studies are summarised in Table 2.

Eighteen different assessment tools were used to measure patients’ QOL across all included studies (Table 2). Eight articles used more than two different tools to measure outcomes [16, 30, 41, 42, 45,46,47, 49]. The most commonly used tools were Quality of Life Questionnaire Ophthalmic Module (QLQ-OPT30, measured the QOL for UM patients) [5, 17, 28, 30, 41, 42, 44, 46] and the Core Quality of Life questionnaire (QLQ-C30, measured the QOL for patients with all kinds of cancer) [5, 17, 44,45,46] authored by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC); the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G, measured physical, social, emotional, and functional well-being domains of QOL in patients with cancer) [30, 40,41,42], National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI-VFQ, measured the dimensions of self-reported vision-targeted health status that are most important for patients with chronic eye diseases) [33, 45, 47], Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS, measure anxiety and depression in a general medical population) [30, 40,41,42, 49] and 12-Item Short Form Survey (SF-12, assessed the impact of health on an individual’s everyday life) [37, 43].

The findings reported in the included studies indicated variations in the QOL of eye cancer survivors across studies. Six studies showed that the overall QOL scores of patients with UM or RB were higher than or similar to those of the healthy general population [5, 16, 17, 40, 42, 49]. However, 11 studies indicated that these patients had a poorer QOL than the healthy general population [28, 30, 33, 37, 41, 43,44,45,46,47,48]. Three studies investigated QOL in patients with RB [16, 33, 49], two of which concluded that the overall QOL was better than that in non-cancer controls [16, 49], and one concluded that QOL was affected by vision-targeted HRQOL in some aspects; for example, subdomains of visual function such as peripheral vision, especially in bilateral survivors of disease (P < 0.001) or with enucleation (P = 0.002) [33]. There were 14 articles investigating the overall QOL of UM patients, 4 out of 14 reported that there is no difference between QOL of these patients and the general population [5, 17, 40, 42], 6 out of 14 reported that the QOL was affected and decreased [30, 37, 41, 43, 44, 47], and 4 out of 14 indicated that the QOL decreased first and then there was no difference with time [28, 45, 46, 48]. Six articles [28, 37, 40, 45, 46, 48] noted poorer QOL at the start of treatment but at the 3 [46], 6 [28, 40],12 [28, 40, 48], 24 [28, 40], 36 [