Asbestos Treatment

Treatment for patients with mesothelioma varies based on the specific individual.  There are several types of treatment your doctor may recommend if you have mesothelioma.  The most common of these treatments include radiation therapy, chemotherapy and surgery.  Experimental treatments are showing some encourging results and are becoming more widely used.  These treatments include immunotherapy, gene therapy and photodynamic therapy.

Treatment for mesothelioma may consist of a combination of different therapies.  For example, a patient may receive surgery to remove as much of the cancerous growth as possible.  This would be followed with chemotherapy or radiotherapy to remove the remaining cancer cells.

Surgery

There are 3 main types of surgical treatments for mesothelioma - curative surgery, palliative surgery and diagnostic surgery. Some types of surgery may fall into more than one category.  For example, thoracentesis may be used as a palliative treatment, providing syptomatic relief, and also as a diagnostic procedure.

For patients with mesothelioma, only one curative surgery can potentially remove all cancer.  It is important, however, for this surgery to be effective, that mesothelioma is diagnosed as early as possible.

Chemotherapy

The intravenous administration of drugs such as Cisplatin and Alimta are the most common forms of chemotherapy.  These drugs are targeted to kill cells that rapidly divide by interfering with the processes that occur during the cell division.  The unpleasant side effects often associated with chemotherapy are caused because not only do cancer cells divide rapidly, but so do some types of healthy cells.  Newer chemotherapy drugs are showing much more promise than the chemo drugs used in the past.

For patients with peritoneal mesothelioma, there is a relatively new form of chemo called heated chemotherapy.  It involves the perfusion of heated chemotherapeutic drugs into the peritoneum and is carried out following surgery.

Radiation

Ionizing radiation, or radiation therapy is used to limit the spread of cancer and to kill cancer cells. Surgery is often used in conjunction with radiation therapy in mesothelioma patients.  However, stand alone treatment of radiation is used to relieve pain and other symptoms of mesothelioma in some cases.  In either case, typically only short-term symptomatic relief is provided with radiation therapy.

Depending on whether or not they are suitable candidates, mesothelioma patients may receive one of two types of radiation therapy.  The traditional type of radiation therapy, extermal beam radiation, uses beams of radiation to kill cancer cells.  A newer type of radiation treatment is known as Brachytherapy.  With this treatment, small radioactive rods are implanted within a tumor to provide a concentrated dose of ratiation to tumors.  Brachytherapy does very little damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

To find out more about what treatments are available to people suffering from mesothelioma, please contact your family physician.