Mesothelioma Pleural Cancer

Mesothelioma pleural cancer can inflict people people with minimal exposure to asbestos and was 100% preventable and unnecessary.

Mesothelioma Treatment Information:

Sadly, Mesothelioma is an incurable disease. However, if mesothelioma cancer is diagnosed early the patient's quality and length of life may be greatly increased. There are several mesothelioma cancer treatments available..

There are three common methods of treatment for malignant mesothelioma cancer:

Surgery

Invasive techniques remove the cancerous tissues from the body Radiation Treatments

External or internal devices used to shrink reduce mesothelioma cancer in the patient

Chemotherapy

a mesothelioma treatment in which a series of pills or injections cause the cancer to discontinue reproducing.

Chemotherapy Mesothelioma Treatment Information

Malignant mesothelioma chemotherapy treatment uses anticancer drugs to eliminate cancer cells.  Only a few drugs have been found to help increase survival times in malignant mesothelioma patients.  Unfortunately, chemotherapy is not highly effective treatment for mesothelioma.  To date there are no stand-alone mesothelioma treatments that have shown great success against Mesothelioma Pleural Disease.

Combining surgery with either chemotherapy or radiation therapy in treating malignant mesothelioma has yielded the best chances of increased survival. This is especially true when mesothelioma is discovered earlier in its development

How Chemotherapy Treats Malignant Mesothelioma

Chemotherapy drugs interfere with malignant mesothelioma cancer cells' ability to divide and reproduce. The cells become damaged and die. Because chemotherapy drugs flow through the blood stream, they reach cancer cells all over the body. These drugs are also toxic to healthy tissues, so chemotherapy must be planned so that it slowly kills the cancer and not normal cells. Following successful chemotherapy, the normal tissue will recover, but the malignant mesothelioma cells will not.

Chemotherapy drugs are given in many different ways. The manner in which you may receive mesothelioma treatment will vary according to your type of cancer and the drugs you are taking. The most common method of delivery is by injection into a vein. Less commonly used methods include oral tablets, muscular injection, or subcutaneous (under the skin) injection.

Mesothelioma Information - Chemotherapy Administration Intravenous injection

In intravenous injection, the mesothelioma treatment drugs are often diluted with liquid and delivered from a bag via a 'drip' into a vein in your arm or hand. Another method of delivery is to insert a plastic tube directly into a vein in the chest. Two potential problems with the intravenous method are the risk of tube blockage and infection. The plastic delivery tube should be flushed with Heparin, a drug that prevents clotting about once a week. You will be able to do this yourself. Intravenous chemotherapy is given over a period of time, usually ranging from half an hour to a few hours, or sometimes a few days.

Infusion pumps

A fairly new and increasingly common method of delivery is the infusion pump. The pumps are portable and are used to deliver a controlled amount of drugs into the bloodstream over a period of time. This means that you may take your mesothelioma treatment at home and make fewer trips to the hospital.

Chemotherapy

Even though chemotherapy can cause unpleasant side effects, some people still manage to lead normal lives. Sometimes chemotherapy can actually make you feel better by alleviating the effects of the cancer. Unfortunately, the drugs can affect normal cells as well as malignant mesothelioma tissue. This can cause many unpleasant side effects. Not all chemotherapy drugs cause the same side effects, however, and some people may have very few. Cancer treatments produce different reactions in different people. Reactions also vary from treatment to treatment. It should be remembered that nearly all side effects are only temporary and will disappear once treatment has stopped.

Body parts that may be affected by chemotherapy in malignant mesothelioma treatment are those whose normal cells rapidly divide and grow. These areas are the mouth, digestive system, skin, hair, and bone marrow.

If you would like to know more about chemotherapy, side effects or additional malignant mesothelioma information, ask your doctor. Although the side effects of chemotherapy can be severe, they should be weighed against the benefit they can produce. Remember, if you are feeling violently ill, your doctor may be able to prescribe other drugs with fewer or less potent side effects.

Chemotherapy Mesothelioma Treatment Side Effects Hair loss

Hair loss is perhaps the best-known side effect of chemotherapy. This can vary according to which medication you happen to be taking. Some people lose very little or no hair, others most or all of it. If you happen to lose your hair during chemotherapy for mesothelioma treatment, it will grow back after treatment has subsided.

Your digestive system

Feelings of sickness are a side effect linked with some chemotherapy. Many people do not become sick from their chemotherapy, nor does every drug cause it. There are now some treatments available to alleviate this sickness. Steroids and other anti-sickness drugs are often given. Some chemotherapy drugs can affect the lining of the digestive system and this may cause diarrhea for a few days. Some people may lose their appetite. Medical marijuana can help restore your appetite and relieve pain.

Bone marrow

Bone marrow contains cells that develop into three different types of cells. The three types are white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. Chemotherapy during mesothelioma treatment can reduce the number of these cells. When the number of these cells is reduced, the body's ability to recover from illness and repair itself is greatly hindered.

Chemotherapy treatment for malignant mesothelioma can cause infertility in both men and women. This infertility may be temporary or permanent, depending on the drugs you are taking. It is important to discuss this risk with your doctor before starting a treatment.

It is quite possible for a woman undergoing chemotherapy mesothelioma treatment, or the female partner of a man undergoing therapy, to become pregnant. This should be avoided, as the drugs may affect the baby. It is imperative that patients use appropriate birth control to avoid any complications during treatment.

For women

Most drugs chemotherapy drugs used for malignant mesothelioma treatment will not affect your fertility, but some may temporarily stop ovulation. Some drugs will induce an artificial menopause. Many doctors will prescribe hormones to alleviate the effects of this.

Most drugs will not affect your fertility.

Those that do affect it will do so by reducing the amount of sperm you produce, the motility of the sperm, as well as sperm morphology. This means that fathering children during treatment is unlikely. You will, however, be able to achieve erection and orgasm normally.

The best advice regarding chemotherapy and how it can help you is available from your doctor. Each case is unique and must be treated on an individual basis.

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Related Topics Asbestos Asbestosis Treatment Options • Chemotherapy • Radiation • Surgery Clinical Trials Info by City:

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Treatment of MM using conventional therapies has not proved successful and patients have a median survival time of 6 - 12 months after presentation. The clinical behaviour of the malignancy is affected by several factors including the continuous mesothelial surface of the pleural cavity which favours local metastasis via exfoliated cells, invasion to underlying tissue and other organs within the pleural cavity, and the extremely long latency period between asbestos exposure and development of the disease.  

Surgery either by itself or used in combination with pre- and post-operative adjuvant therapies has proved disappointing with a 5 year survival rate of less than 10%. It is most useful for palliation.    Radiation Although the tumor is highly resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, these regimens are sometimes used to relieve symptoms arising from tumour metastases such as obstruction of a major blood vessel.  

Chemotherapy In February 2004, the Food and Drug Administration approved pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma.   Immunotherapy Treatment regimens involving immunotherapy have yielded variable results. For example, intrapleural inoculation of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) in an attempt to boost the immune response, was found to be of no benefit to the patient (while it may benefit patients with bladder cancer). Mesothelioma cells proved susceptible to in vitro lysis by LAK cells following activation by interleukin-2 (IL-2), but patients undergoing this particular therapy experienced major side effects. Indeed, this trial was suspended in view of the unacceptably high levels of IL-2 toxicity and the severity of side effects such as fever and cachexia. Nonetheless, other trials involving interferon alpha have proved more encouraging with 20% of patients experiencing a greater than 50% reduction in tumor mass combined with minimal side effects.   Heated Intraoperative Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy

A procedure known as heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy was developed by Paul Sugarbaker at the Washington Cancer Institute[5]. The surgeon removes as much of the tumor as possible followed by the direct administration of a chemotherapy agent, heated to between 40 and 48°C, in the abdomen. The fluid is perfused for 60 to 120 minutes and then drained.   This technique permits the administration of high concentrations of selected drugs into the abdominal and pelvic surfaces. Heating the chemotherapy treatment increases the penetration of the drugs into tissues. Also, heating itself damages the malignant cells more than the normal cells.

 General Review Article. "Advances in Malignant Mesothelioma" by Bruce W. S. Robinson and Richard A. Lake in The New England Journal of Medicine (2005) volume 353 pages 1591-1603 Entrez PubMed 16221782. ↑ "SV40 in human tumors: new documents shed light on the apparent controversy" by D. S. MacLachlan in Anticancer Res (2002) volume 22, pages 3495-3499 Entrez PubMed 12552945. ↑ "A review of peritoneal mesothelioma at the Washington Cancer Institute" by P. H. Sugarbaker, L. S. Welch, F. Mohamed and O. Glehen in Surg Oncol Clin N Am (2003) volume 12, pages 605-621 Entrez PubMed 13782506. Online manual: Management of Peritoneal Surface Malignancy. ↑ "Diffuse pleural mesothelioma and asbestos exposure in the North Western Cape Province" by J. C. Wagner, C. A. Sleggs and P. Marchand in Br J Ind Med. (1960) volume 17, pages 260-271 Entrez PubMed 13782506. ↑ "Malignant pleural mesothelioma in an asbestos worker" by J. C. McNulty in Med J Aust (1962) volume 49, pages 953-954 Entrez PubMed 13932248. [edit] See also Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation [edit] External links Mesothelioma: Questions and Answers from the National Cancer Institute American Cancer Society Asbestos Newspaper Archive Free archive of 50,000 newspaper pages dedicated to Asbestos Cancer.gov: Malignant Mesothelioma CancerBACUP: Mesothelioma Information Centre Medlineplus: Mesothelioma Worksafe, Western Australia [edit] Sources The first version of this article was adapted from a public domain U.S. National Cancer Institute fact sheet at http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/6_36.htm   Tumors (and related structures), Cancer, and Oncology Benign - Premalignant - Carcinoma in situ - Malignant Topography: Anus - Bladder - Bone - Brain - Breast - Cervix - Colon/rectum - Duodenum - Endometrium - Esophagus - Eye - Gallbladder - Head/Neck - Liver - Larynx - Lung - Mouth - Pancreas - Penis - Prostate - Kidney - Ovaries - Skin - Stomach - Testicles - Thyroid   Morphology: Papilloma/carcinoma - Adenoma/adenocarcinoma - Soft tissue sarcoma - Melanoma - Fibroma/fibrosarcoma - Lipoma/liposarcoma - Leiomyoma/leiomyosarcoma - Rhabdomyoma/rhabdomyosarcoma - Mesothelioma - Angioma/angiosarcoma - Osteoma/osteosarcoma - Chondroma/chondrosarcoma - Glioma - Lymphoma/leukemia   Treatment: Chemotherapy - Radiation therapy - Immunotherapy - Experimental cancer treatment   Related structures: Cyst - Dysplasia - Hamartoma - Neoplasia - Nodule - Polyp - Pseudocyst   Misc: Tumor suppressor genes/oncogenes - Staging/grading - Carcinogenesis/metastasis - Carcinogen - Research - Paraneoplastic phenomenon - ICD-O - List of oncology-related terms   Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesothelioma" Categories: Oncology | Pulmonology | Types of cancer