Cancer Doctors Have Breakthrough Tools in Battle with Mesothelioma, Even if Prognosis Looks Grim
Oncologists and other cancer doctors choose what course of treatment to pursue for a patient. There are many options. There are no one size fits all treatment regimen for mesothelioma cancer patients. This is because of the relative rareness of the disease, the high mortality rate and low treatment success rate, and the few scientific studies to provide meaningful statistics.
The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, but doctors have recently made progress. Traditional treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and surrounding tissue), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) Each one of these methods have problems. Patients with mesothelioma have not responded well to traditional radiation therapy. In hopes to lessen damage to healthy tissue, researches are studying ways to aim radiation right at the tumor.
Surgery takes out the mesothelial cancerous tissue around the tumor. The surgery is difficult and challenging, with unknown effects or benefits to patients. Common chemotherapy drugs that work on other types of cancer usually do not work on mesothelioma, and different combinations of chemotherapy drugs have been tried without a lot of success. As with radiation, research is going toward controlling the physical location of the treatment with emphasis on the pleural cavity.
The high-mortality rate for mesothelioma patients means cutting-edge techniques for cancer are tried out. Such treatments include anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide and biologic therapies agent interleukin 2. A new drug that has shown results in improving survival is pemetrexed (brand name Alimta).
Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Two exotic ways of attacking mesothelioma are gene therapy and photodynamic therapy. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
