Most Cancer Treatments Are Not Effective Victims of Mesothelioma, though Genetic Therapy Could Provide a Beneficial Treatment
Oncologists choose what course of treatment to administer to their patient. There are many options. There exists no universal treatment course for pleural mesothelioma patients. This is due to the cancers high mortality rate, rareness, low treatment success rate, and small number of studies to provide meaningful statistics.
The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, but doctors have recently made progress. Treatments for cancer are traditionally surgery (taking out the tumor and surrounding tissue), 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. In hopes to lessen damage to healthy tissue, researches are studying ways to aim radiation right at the tumor.
Surgery takes out the mesothelial cancerous tissue around the tumor. This surgery is extensive and it is not clear how much the patient benefits. 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 death rate for mesothelioma is so high that many of even the most sophisticated techniques in cancer treatment are tried out on patients. 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..
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.
