Oncologists Have Breakthrough Alternatives in Fight against Mesothelioma, despite the Fact that Prognosis Looks Desperate
Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment determine what kind of treatment to pursue for every patient. There are numerous options. There is no one size fits all treatment option for mesothelioma cancer victims. This is due to the cancers high mortality rate, rareness, low treatment success rate, and small number of studies to provide meaningful statistics.
While prospects for patients with mesothelioma have been bleak, doctors have been making progress. Treatments for cancer are traditionally surgery (taking out the tumor and surrounding tissue), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) All three methods have problems. 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.
Surgery takes out the mesothelial cancerous tissue around the tumor. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. The usual chemotherapy cocktails effective on other cancers are not effective on mesothelioma, and different mixtures of these drugs have not been successful. Similar to radiation, focus in research is focusing on treating the physical location of the tumor with emphasis on the pleural cavity.
Many advanced techniques in cancer treatment are tried on mesothelioma patients because of its high fatality rate. 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 exotic ways of attacking mesothelioma are gene therapy and photodynamic therapy. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
