Mesothelioma is a cancer caused by contact with asbestos, a carcinogen The disease attacks the lining of the lung or the lining of the abdominal cavity
Mesothelioma is a cancer caused by contact with asbestos, a carcinogen. The disease attacks the lining of the lung or the lining of the abdominal cavity. It can be difficult to deal with this type of cancer and find decent mesothelioma info online. This article will outline some of the main treatment options available to deal with the disease. The more knowledge you have about this disease, the better.
Most people searching for mesothelioma info are looking for information regarding the different treatments currently available to those affected by the cancer. The type of treatment you receive for it depends on many factors, including cancer stage, location of the disease, and how far it has spread. It also depends on how the cancer cells look under the microscope. Your age and personal wishes are another factor to consider. Although this disease is very dangerous, there have been successful treatments.
There are three main treatment types for those who have been diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma - surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Surgery physically removes the cancer, while chemotherapy using drugs to kill the cancer. With radiation therapy treatment high doses of x-rays and other high-energy rays are used to target and kill the cancer. In your search for reliable information, you may have already discovered that in many cases, two or more of these methods are used to beat the cancer.
One of the surgical procedures that can be performed on mesothelioma patients is called palliative surgery, which involves treating the symptoms of the without going after the disease directly. Palliative treatments often include drainage of the chest tube and pleurodesis - the buildup of fluid is usually what first alerts patients to the reality of their situation. After the fluid has been initially drained, it often returns and patients have to undergo more procedures to permanently remove the remaining fluid. The pleural space must be closed to prevent future problems with fluid buildup.
If you want to know more about mesothelioma info, it''s important to realize that other procedures are designed to cure the disease, rather than for palliative reasons. The goal of this type of surgical procedure is to remove the whole of the cancer - but take note that with the surgical removal of the cancer microscopic remnants of the disease are always left behind and have the potential to grow back after the surgery has been completed. It takes time, but you have to realize that this is a strong possibility with surgical treatment procedures.
For this very reason adjuvant therapy is carried out after the surgical procedure to minimize this possibility. This method of treatment is administered in addition to the primary surgery to remove residual disease.
For patients in the early stages, a pleurectomy/decortication is usually the route taken to remove the tumor. If the doctors can''t remove the entire tumor without removing the lung, the lung will be taken out (this is referred to as a pneumonectomy). As science progresses, there are other options for treatment, including gene therapy, immunotherapy, and photodynamic therapy.
Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer in which malignant (cancerous) cells are found in the mesothelium, a protective sac that covers most of the body's internal organs. With rare exceptions, most mesothelioma cancers are considered malignant mesothelioma. The two major types of malignant mesothelioma are pleural mesothelioma, which concerns the mesothelium membrane that surrounds the lungs, and peritoneal mesothelioma which concerns the mesothelium layer that covers the organs in the abdominal cavity. The prognosis, therapy (including types of chemotherapy) and treatment choices are similar whether the cancer is pleural mesothelioma or peritoneal mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma Treatments and Therapies
Standard treatment for all but localized mesothelioma is generally not curative.1 Surgery and radiotherapy have a limited role in highly selected mesothelioma patients and chemotherapy is the only potential treatment option for the majority of people diagnosed with mesothelioma. Sometimes, these mesothelioma therapies are combined. Despite activity of some chemotherapy, the results are still modest, with a median survival of approximately one year. For individual patients, treatment for mesothelioma depends on the location of the cancer, the stage of the disease, and the patient's age and general health. The only FDA approved chemotherapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma (in combination with cisplatin) is pemetrexed (Alimta). In the key clinical trial that led to its approval for mesothelioma, Alimta was combined with another chemotherapy drug (cisplatin) and compared with cisplatin alone. The median survival for the patients who received both chemotherapy drugs was 12.1 months versus 9.3 months for mesothelioma patients who only received cisplatin.2
Mesothelioma Prognosis and Survival
In general the prognosis of mesothelioma is poor and most studies report median survival of less than a year. However, there are long term mesothelioma survivors (both pleural and peritoneal survivors) who have survived more than 10 years. In fact, in one mesothelioma study, doctors writing about the prognosis of mesothelioma explained that long-term mesothelioma survivors do exist and their prognosis may be independent of the treatment or therapies pursued.3 If this is true, it would suggest that mesothelioma prognosis and survival may be more dependent on individual differences among patients (and perhaps the non-conventional therapies they use) and less dependent upon conventional mesothelioma treatments.
Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer in which malignant (cancerous) cells are found in the mesothelium, a protective sac that covers most of the body's internal organs. With rare exceptions, most mesothelioma cancers are considered malignant mesothelioma. The two major types of malignant mesothelioma are pleural mesothelioma, which concerns the mesothelium membrane that surrounds the lungs, and peritoneal mesothelioma which concerns the mesothelium layer that covers the organs in the abdominal cavity. The prognosis, therapy (including types of chemotherapy) and treatment choices are similar whether the cancer is pleural mesothelioma or peritoneal mesothelioma. 