Mesothelioma Treatment Options

While there is no cure for mesothelioma, a variety of treatment options are available. To discover the best course of treatment, your doctor will take several factors into consideration, including:

• Location of the cancer
• Type of mesothelioma
• Stage of the disease
• General health of the patient
• Wishes of the patient

If the mesothelioma is detected early, surgery can be performed to remove as much of the cancerous tissue as possible. The most aggressive form of mesothelioma treatment, surgery aims to stop the growth of the cancer by extracting damaged tissues. Unfortunately, because most mesothelioma patients are over the age of 50, with many in their 60s and 70s, surgery may not always be the best option. Older people may have heart or respiratory problems that could become troublesome under the stress of surgery. However, for patients who are in good health, surgery can be an option as long as the disease has not spread to other areas of the body.

If surgery is not an option, mesothelioma patients can undergo radiation, which is used to kill cancer cells. Unfortunately, because radiation is not a precise technology, healthy cells also may be destroyed. Many these patients will also receive chemotherapy in conjunction with the radiation treatments.

Chemotherapy as a mesothelioma treatment has seen some advances in the past few years. Altima has become the first FDA-approved drug specifically for mesothelioma treatment and has proved successful when used in conjunction with the chemotherapy drug Cisplatin. In fact, this Altima-Cisplatin chemotherapy treatment has become the most effective treatment for mesothelioma patients who cannot undergo surgery. During clinical trials, patients who received this combination of chemotherapy drugs survived, on average, for three months longer than those on Cisplatin alone.

While surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are the standard mesothelioma treatments, alternative options are available. These new methods mimic an engineering challenge, searching for a more effective way to cause a cellular reaction. Some new, experimental mesothelioma treatments, which aim to destroy cancer cells and stop their multiplication, include:

• Immunotherapy
• Photodynamic therapy
• Gene therapy
• Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)

Because the survival time for mesothelioma patients is short, waiting for a new treatment can be difficult. However, the research into mesothelioma today will benefit future suffers and even individuals with other types of cancer.