Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment choose what course of treatment to prescribe for a patient. There are many options. There are no regular treatment option for malignant mesothelioma sufferers. 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. Customary treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and the tissue that surrounds it), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) Each one of these methods have problems. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. Researchers are looking for ways of aiming radiation directly at the tumor in hopes that this will result in less damage to healthy tissue.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. Most chemotherapy medication that work on other cancers typically do not work on mesothelioma, and combinations of chemotherapy agents have been tried, but without much success. Similar to radiation, focus in research is focusing on treating the physical location of the tumor with emphasis on the pleural cavity.
The death rate for mesothelioma is so high that many of even the most sophisticated techniques in cancer treatment are tried out on patients. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. Pemetrexed (Alimta) is a new drug that has shown results in extending life.
Before acting, oncologists review the stage of mesothelioma, position of the tumor, and age and health status of the patient. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Mesothelioma patients sometimes become involved in clinical trials in this area, and see benefits.