Pleural Mesothelioma Treatment

pleural mesothelioma treatment

If you have or know someone with mesothelioma then you know it's an awful way to live your precious time on earth. The general lifespan of a person diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma or peritoneal mesothelioma is from 1 to 3 years. That figure varies from person to person depending on their age, general health and stage of the illness. Meaning a mesothelioma infected person may live even less than that.

This is all very sad and gloomy, but with traditional mesothelioma treatments life could be enhanced by eighty to a hundred percent. These meso treatments vary from surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Regrettably these procedures don't cure the cancer; they just act on symptoms and try to alleviate the patient from as much pain as possible.

Radiation

Inside the traditional mesothelioma treatments, radiation is considered to be the best. Although secondary effects like skin irritation, hair loss and even nausea can accompany this treatment, your lifespan is expanded the most. This procedure tackles infected areas only so your whole body won't be bombarded by the rays.

Chemotherapy

It could be bitter at the start, but sweeter in the end. Causing nausea, hair loss, fatigue, general dehydration, between other side effects; it has been proven that infected cells die and are prevented from regenerating further more.

Surgery

This could be the most common of the mesothelioma treatments. No severe side effects come with this procedure. It's generally about going inside your body and removing tumors and affected zones with mesothelioma.

Future Mesothelioma Treatments

The National Cancer Institute of the United States is very much aware of this illness and is in the top 10 of their diseases to eradicate. They promote clinical campaigns that let the patient be part of and try to find new and more efficient and cost effective mesothelioma treatments. This is so because current treatments cost thousands of dollars and they should be available for everyone.

About the Author

After certain events in his life, Ermenegildo Billar has dedicated years of his life to understanding and helping people with the malignant mesothelioma. For your comfort he decided to create www.infothelioma.com so you can have easy access to his research.

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is caused by exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. The most common sites for this disease are as follows: • Pleura – Outer lining of the lungs and internal chest wall• Peritoneum – The lining of the abdominal cavity, • Heart• Pericardium – The sac that surrounds the heart • Tunica Vaginalis – The membrane covering the testisPeople who develop Mesothelioma have worked in job locations where they inhaled asbestos particles or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fiber. Research also suggests that people who are working in close association with those handling asbestos are also at risk of developing this disease. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between Mesothelioma and smoking, but smoking greatly increases risk of other asbestos-induced cancer.

Pleural Mesothelioma - Treatment with Chemotherapy

Tags: cancer, malignant, mesothelioma, pleural, treatment

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 at 4:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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The Importance of Targeted Cancer Treatment

A few years ago, gefitinib was written off as an ineffective drug treatment for lung cancer. This conclusion was based on a 2004 study that found no correlation between gefitinib and prolonged lifespan among lung cancer participants. However, scientists who revisited the drug eventually found that gefitinib is exceptionally effective in treating a small minority of lung cancer patients.

Through additional research, scientists were able to determine that individuals who harbored a lung cancer tumor that exhibited a specific mutant form of EGFR (epithelial growth factor receptor) responded well to gefitinib. As a result, the drug currently serves as a viable treatment option for a select group of patients.

This example is just one of several that shows the importance of targeted cancer treatment. While past treatment philosophies have focused on treating all individuals with a specific type of cancer in the same way, new research shows that a variety of cancer subsets within a cancer type are more susceptible to certain types of treatment.

This shift in cancer treatment has been in the works for several years. Unfortunately, success stories have been slow to materialize. According to experts such as MIT professor Michael Yaffe, one reason for this is the breakdown in communication between cancer biologists who identify mutations and doctors in the clinic who put such knowledge to application.

As Yaffe explains, “We need a better translational mechanism for being able to take the things we discover here at MIT and elsewhere, and test them directly in large clinical trials. That’s sort of a bottleneck that I think everyone is aware of.”

Despite such hurdles as this, a handful of landmark targeted cancer treatments have already been identified. Most notably is the success of Gleevec, a drug that has single-handedly made CML (a rare type of leukemia) a manageable chronic illness.

Currently, breast cancer is one of the few cancer types to be routinely screened for specific genetic mutations. This is because the presence of specific mutations may indicate whether or not Herceptin will serve as an effective treatment. However, many scientists foresee a future in which all cancer patients receive a comprehensive screening immediately following diagnosis.

According to Alan D’Andrea of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the purpose of such default screening would be to identify the potential benefits of conventional treatment. “If we could identify up front the patients who are not going to respond to conventional drugs, we could immediately put them on an experimental therapy.”

Before such a vision becomes a reality, however, viable pathways must be identified to target. Additionally, safe and effective drugs must be developed to attack these pathways one identified. Presently, there are a wide number of studies investigating both of these steps among a number of cancer types.

Source:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/

This entry was posted on Monday, December 6th, 2010 at 2:44 pm and is filed under cancer treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Stress May Reduce Effectiveness of Cancer Treatment

Increased levels of stress n either mental or physical n may reduce the effectiveness of cancer treatment, according to researchers at Ohio State University. These findings are based on studies that looked at how breast cancer cultures reacted to treatment in relation to levels of a stress-related protein.

Results suggest that the heat shock factor-1 (HSF-1) protein, which increases in production at the onset of stress, reduces the body’s ability to kill cancer cells. This decrease in effectiveness was witnessed even after cancer cells were damaged through the process of radiation or chemotherapy treatment.

HSF-1 is associated with both mental stress and physical stress. The body produces it in an attempt to insulate healthy cells and tissues from the negative effects of stress. Apparently, it also helps insulate cancer cells from negative harm as well.

In response to this, Ohio State researchers recommend patients take steps to reduce mental and physical sources of stress in the days leading up to treatment. Both relaxation and physical inactivity are important, according to researchers.

While exercise and activity are often recommended for cancer patients, lead study author Govindasamy Ilangovan notes that timing of exercise is important: “It looks like any intense or prolonged physical activity a couple of days before the start of cancer therapy is highly risky, and has potential to reduce the benefits of treatment.”

Though the study looked only for a link between breast cancer and stress, it should be noted that HSF-1 production could affect a wide variety of cancer types.

Based on these findings, researchers suggest that it may be possible to develop drugs that effectively suppress the adverse treatment effects of HSF-1. The University of Ohio study was published in the September 21st online edition of Molecular Cancer Research.

Sources:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hiCLJ_GqdRgeCbHM587ophqP3pnQ
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/643444.html

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2010 at 7:52 am and is filed under Medical news, cancer treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy in Mesothelioma Treatment

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy for pleural mesothelioma treatment should be considered if the cancer is in late stage, where surgical intervention is likely to be of any use due to spread (metastasis) of pleural mesothelioma to other parts of the body such as abdomen and other body parts.

Chemotherapy for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma:

This is the most common form of treatment in pleural mesothelioma, as most of the patients with pleural mesothelioma are treated with chemotherapy, even if surgery and/or radiotherapy is used for management of pleural mesothelioma. Chemotherapy must be used in late stages of the disease, when surgery will have little or no effect in treatment of pleural mesothelioma due to spread of the disease in distant parts of the body. There are several chemotherapeutic agents which are useful in treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma, but at present USFDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) approve only use of Cisplatin along with Alimta for treatment of pleural mesothelioma. Other chemotherapeutic agents are not approved by USFDA for treatment of pleural mesothelioma. There are several chemotherapeutic agents undergoing clinical trial to determine effectiveness of these chemotherapeutic agents, such as Gemcitabine, Navelbine in treatment of pleural mesothelioma.

Radiotherapy for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma:

Radiotherapy or radiation therapy is also commonly used modality in treatment of pleural mesothelioma, especially in the late stages, as is used in treatment of other forms of cancer. Generally radiotherapy is used in combination with surgery or chemotherapy or with both for best results in pleural mesothelioma. External beam radiation is used to cause mutation of tumor cells within the body and slow their growth and spread.

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