Cancer doctors determine what kind of treatment to go with for each patient. There are numerous options. There is no regular treatment regimen for mesothelioma cancer 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), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) There are problems with all three. Patients with mesothelioma have not responded well to traditional radiation therapy. In hopes to lessen damage to healthy tissue, researches are studying ways to aim radiation right at the tumor.
The mesothelial tissue around the tumor is removed by surgery. 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 combinations of chemotherapy drugs have been tried without a lot of success. Similar to radiation, focus in research is focusing on treating the physical location of the tumor 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. These techniques include a biologic therapy called the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide. The new drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) has shown good results in extending life with mesotheliomas..
Considered by oncologists is where the tumor is located, what stage the mesothelioma is in, and the age and health of the patient. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Mesothelioma patients sometimes become involved in clinical trials in this area, and see benefits.