Oncologists choose what type of treatment to administer to each patient. There are many options. There is no universal treatment regimen for mesothelioma cancer victims. 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.
Mesothelioma patients have historically had a bleak outlook, but doctors have recently made progress. Customary treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and the tissue that surrounds it), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) There are problems with all three. 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.
The mesothelial tissue around the tumor is removed by surgery. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. 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. 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. The new drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) has shown good results in extending life with mesotheliomas..
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.
