Mesothelioma Treatment

Mesothelioma | What are my options?

There are a number of factors that affect what treatment options may be available to you, or suitable for you.

Mesothelioma lays dormant for many years, and often decades before manifesting itself as a condition, and therefore you are highly unlikely to know that anything is wrong with you prior to any symptoms occurring.  As a result, the cancer is often at a fairly advanced state before you know you have it.  The level to which the disease has advanced will affect the treatment options that you might want to consider.

Chemotherapy

Progress is being made all the time with regards to the treatment of mesothelioma.

Chemotherapy is a popular choice for reducing the size of the mesothelioma tumours and thus alleviating some of the uncomfortable symptoms.  Of course with chemotherapy comes side affects which can include hair loss, nausea and diarrhoea.

Your doctor will go through the available chemotherapy drugs, which are often combined for better effect (a common combination is Pemetrexed (also referred to as Alimta) with Cisplatin.  Some patients respond better than others, although it can be that the reduction of the size of the mass of the meso is at it’s best during treatment and shortly after, but not sustained indefinitely.   Response rates of around 41% have been achieved for this combination. Folic acid and vitamin B-12 are given to counteract the adverse effects of Pemetrexed. This 2 drug regimen has emerged as the standard drug combination.

Radiation

High dose radiation has been used to treat the chest pain associated with mesothelioma. Up to 50% experienced a decrease in pain. Radiation has not been shown to increase survival time.

Surgery

Two types of surgery are sometimes performed as treatment of mesothelioma. The first type called Pleurectomy with decortication involves cutting open the two layered pleural membrane surrounding the lung and removing cancerous overgrowth areas. The pleura is then reconstructed.

The second, more radical surgery involves dissection of the pleura, pericardium and lung tissue. This procedure provides better local control of the cancer than Pleurectomy because the mesothelium tissue is removed.

Surgery alone has a low cure rate and most patients die within a few months. Many have evidence of metastatic tumors in other parts of their body.

Trimodal Treatment

Trimodal treatment is the combination of all three treatment modalities – chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Studies using various combinations of trimodal treatment have shown survival rates that are better than any of the therapy modalities alone.

Advances in the treatment of mesothelioma continue to emerge. Only a few short years ago mesothelioma was considered an untreatable disease with no hope of survival beyond a few months from diagnosis. Though still a difficult disease to treat, the prospects of a mesothelioma patient today are significantly better than even 2 years ago.

For more information take a look at http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/malignantmesothelioma/patient/page1

 

There is currently no known cure for mesothelioma, but there are teams of scientists working on it all over the world, and progress is being made.