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Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment choose what type of treatment to pursue to their patient. The options are endless. There exists no standard treatment option for mesothelioma sufferers. 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.

The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, but doctors have recently made progress. Customary treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and the tissue that surrounds it), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) 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 removes the mesothelial 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 combinations of chemotherapy agents have been tried, but without much success. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.

The high-mortality rate for mesothelioma patients means cutting-edge techniques for cancer are tried out. These techniques include a biologic therapy called the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide. A new drug that has shown results in improving survival is pemetrexed (brand name Alimta).

Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.

Filed at 8:06 am under Health + More, Science Hall
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