The Usual Treatments Not Effective against Mesothelioma
Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment choose what kind of treatment to pursue to a patient. There are numerous options. There are no universal treatment option for mesothelioma patients. Mesotheliomas lack of agreed-upon treatment is due to low a treatment success rate, rareness, a high mortality rate and a small number of studies providing meaningful stats.
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), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) There are problems with all three. 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 takes out the mesothelial cancerous tissue around the tumor. The surgery is difficult and challenging, with unknown effects or benefits to patients. Common chemotherapy drugs that work on other types of cancer usually do not work on mesothelioma, and different mixtures of these drugs have not been successful. 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. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. A new drug that has shown results in improving survival is pemetrexed (brand name Alimta).
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. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.
