Mesothelioma Treatment Options

Mesothelioma Treatment Options

There are several types of treatment available for patients with mesothelioma, some recommended more frequently than others. The most commonly used mesothelioma treatment options are surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. In addition, some experimental treatments are becoming more common and are showing some encouraging results in clinical trials. These treatments include photodynamic therapy, gene therapy, and immunotherapy, among others.

Mesothelioma Surgery

Surgical treatments for mesothelioma include three main types - diagnostic surgery, curative surgery, and palliative surgery. Some types of surgery fall into more than one category.
Though a cure for mesothelioma does not currently exist,
many patients elect to undergo treatment to combat the cancer. Patients may also wish to participate in clinical trials conducted to test up-and-coming treatments and medications before they are released and recommended for public use. Clinical trials are extremely important in the search for a mesothelioma cure. Knowledge gained from study results greatly help medicalprofessionals come closer to the discovery of a cure for mesothelioma.
For example, thoracentesis may be used as a diagn ostic procedure, and as a palliative treatment to provide symptomatic relief. Only curative surgery can potentially remove all cancer from a patient with mesothelioma.However, for curative surgery to be effective, it is particularly important that mesothelioma be diagnosed as early as possible. Unfortunately, mesothelioma is not usually diagnosed until it reaches Stage III or IV, when surgery is not an option.

Mesothelioma Chemotherapy

Most forms of chemotherapy involve the intravenous administra tion of drugs such as Alimta and Cisplatin. Chemotherapeutic drugs are targeted to kill cells that are rapidly dividing by interfering with processes that occur during cell division.
However, while cancer cells themselves divide rapidly, so do some types of healthy cells, causing some of the unpleasant side effects that are often associated with this form of treatment. Though older chemotherapy medications seemed to do little to fight mesothelioma, newer chemotherapy drugs are showing much promise.A relatively new form of chemotherapy called heated chemotherapy is an option for patients with peritoneal mesothelioma.This treatment is carried out following surgery, and involves the perfusion of heated chemotherapeutic medications into the peritoneum.

Mesothelioma Radiation

Radiation therapy, or "ionizing radiation", is used to kill cancer cells and to limit the spread of cancer. For patients with mesothelioma, radiation therapy is most often used in conjunction with surgery. However, in some cases radiation may be used as a stand-alone treatment to relieve pain and other symptoms associated with mesothelioma. In either case, it is rare for radiation therapy to provide more than short-term symptomatic relief.Mesothelioma patients may receive one of two types of radiation therapies, depending on whether or not they are suitable candidates for either procedure.External beam radiation therapy is the traditional type of radiation therapy, where tumors are bombarded with beams of radiation to kill cancer cells. Brachytherapy is a newer type of radiation treatment. It involves tiny radioactive rods which are implanted within a tumor to provide a strong, concentrated dose of radiation to tumors while doing very little damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

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