Oncologists Hold New Alternatives in Battle with Mesothelioma, though Prognosis Is Still Grim
Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment determine what course of treatment to pursue to each patient. There are numerous options. There is no standard treatment course for pleural mesothelioma cancer sufferers. This is due to the cancers high mortality rate, rareness, low treatment success rate, and small number of studies to provide meaningful statistics.
Mesothelioma patients have historically had a bleak outlook, 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. Mesothelioma patients treated with traditional radiation therapy have not responded well to it. Researches, concerned about damage to healthy tissue, are looking for ways to aim radiation directly at tumors.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. This surgery is extensive and it is not clear how much the patient benefits. The usual chemotherapy cocktails effective on other cancers are not effective on mesothelioma, and combinations of chemotherapy agents have been tried, but without much success. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an 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. Such treatments include anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide and biologic therapies agent interleukin 2. 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. Two therapies that are extremely cutting-edge in fighting cancer are called photodynamic and gene therapy. Mesothelioma patients sometimes become involved in clinical trials in this area, and see benefits.
