Mesothelioma: Treatment Options for an Incurable Disease

Mesothelioma is a rare and aggressive form of cancer. In most cases, the prognosis is very poor at the time of diagnosis. Generally, patients are not more than twelve months to live after a positive diagnosis of mesothelioma. Thus, the treatment options for such an aggressive and rapidly developing disease are quite limited. Mesothelioma treatment is usually palliative. In other words, the goal of treatment is to simply rid the patient of pain symptoms associated with mesothelioma. There is no hope of treatment of patients from the disease for several reasons:

(i) diagnosis occurs very late in the disease. By the time a diagnosis is made there is no hope for the patient.

(ii) development of the disease is very fast and affects critical organs like the heart and lungs.

surgery

or cytoreduction surgery involves removing all or nearly all the visible tumor. In the case of mesothelioma, usually in combination with chemotherapy to more effectively remove cancer cells. Some surgical operations aimed at treating a patient, especially if the cancer is still localized. In most other cases, surgery May only have a palliative effect as the cancerous mass smanjuje.Sljedeće types of surgery used to treat mesothelioma:

(i) pleurodesis: inserting an irritant into the pleural space causing inflammation, which closes down the pleural space, thereby inhibiting fluid accumulation (pleural effusion). Most of the symptoms associated with pleural mesothelioma can be cured with this method for a vrijeme.Thoracoscope used to it.

(ii) or Pleurectomy peritonectomy: removal of part of the chest or abdomen lining trim (depending on where the cancer ).

(iii) Decortication:. Removing all or part of the membrane covering the organs

(iv) pneumonectomy: removal of the entire affected lung (in most cases, mesothelioma develops in only one lung, so that the removal of the lung can be cured if the patient's cancer has not spread ).

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy involves the administration of drugs that destroy cancer cells. Chemotherapy in the treatment of mesothelioma may have the following goals:

(i) Shrinkage of the tumor before surgery (neo-adjuvant chemotherapy ).

(ii) the destruction of cancer cells after surgery (adjuvant chemotherapy ).

(iii) increase the effectiveness of radiation therapy (immunotherapy ).

Chemotherapy is used in cases where cancer cells have spread beyond the initial page appears. It is also used, where the patient is a candidate for surgery.

The most commonly used drug for mesothelioma is pemetrexed, which is an inhibitor of many proteins that are required for DNA synthesis and cell replication.

Chemotherapy has different side effects because in the process of destroying cancer cells healthy cells are also damaged.

Radiotherapy

This refers to the treatment of cancer using penetrating beams of high energy. In the case of mesothelioma, radiotherapy can be used in combination with surgery in an attempt to cure or control your weight simptoma.Primjer radiotherapy is intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) that uses a computer generated image of the target cancer cells directly from a limited impact on the surrounding tissue.