Mesothelioma
and Lung Cancer Information Center
Advanced Cancer Help is
part of the Renaissance Healthcare Systems network and is dedicated
giving our patients and their families the best
quality healthcare available. We invite you to join us in sharing
your information in the battle against
mesothelioma. With the latest news and information regarding
mesothelioma treatment, clinical trials, research and cancer survivors.
Renaissance Healthcare
offers both medical assistance for you or
your loved one and legal assistance through specialized mesothelioma
attorneys. Our primary concern is treatment of the overall patient
and seeking to provide the highest "whole life" care. Patients who
have been diagnosed with mesothelioma or asbestosis can receive
financial settlements to help them offset patient care costs. For
our assistance in finding a quality treatment program and finding a
qualified mesothelioma attorney please fill out our contact form
and someone from our staff will review you case and offer get you or
your loved one the assistance they need.
Types of
Mesothelioma:
Pleural mesothelioma is a cancer of the cells that make up the pleura or
lining around the outside of the lungs and inside of the ribs. Its only
known cause in the U.S. is previous exposure to asbestos fibers, including chrysotile, amosite or crocidolite. This exposure is likely to have
happened twenty or more years before the disease becomes evident, since it
takes many years for the disease to "incubate." It is the most common type
of mesothelioma, accounting for about 75% of all cases.
Benign mesothelioma can often be removed surgically, are generally not
life-threatening, and are not usually related to asbestos exposure.
Malignant mesothelioma, however, are very serious. Fortunately, they are
rare - about two thousand people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in the
U.S. each year. Many of the organs in the abdomen are
enveloped by a thin membrane of mesothelial cells, known as the
peritoneum.
Peritoneal mesothelioma is a tumor of this
membrane. Its only known cause in the U.S. is previous exposure to
asbestos, but it can be many years after exposure before the disease
appears. Peritoneal mesothelioma account for about one-fifth of all
mesothelioma.
Pericardial Mesothelioma is a tumor that can occur at any age with a mean
age of 46 years at presentation. Patients present with chest pain, dyspnea,
cough, and palpitations. Although there appears to be a strong link to
asbestos exposure, a definite association has not been established due to
the rarity of this lesion. Surgery combined with radiation therapy may
provide some palliation, but the prognosis is extremely poor. On CT there
is irregular, diffuse pericardial thickening and a pericardial effusion.
Pericardium is a thin lining of tissue surrounding the heart.
Symptoms of Mesothelioma:
When the symptoms of peritoneal
mesothelioma appear, they typically include abdominal pains, weakness,
weight loss, loss of appetite, nausea, and abdominal swelling. Fluid often
accumulates in the peritoneal space, a condition known as ascites. Over
time the wasting symptoms can become more and more severe.
The growing tumor can exert increasing
pressure on the organs in the abdomen, leading to bowel obstruction and
distention. If the tumor presses upward, it can impair breathing capacity.
If the tumor pushes against areas with many nerve fibers, and the bowel
distends, the amount of pain can increase.
Treating Mesothelioma:
The treatment options for people with mesothelioma have improved
significantly, especially for those whose cancer is diagnosed early and
treated vigorously. Many people are treated with a combination of
therapies, sometimes known as multimodal therapy.
Specific types of
treatment include:
-
Chemotherapy and other
drug-based therapies
-
Radiation therapy
-
Surgery and
-
Intra-operative photodynamic
therapy.
There are also experimental
treatments like gene therapy and immunotherapy, angiogenesis inhibitors,
and clinical trials for various new treatments and combinations of
treatments.
Treatments that reduce pain and
improve lung function, are becoming more successful (although they cannot
cure mesothelioma.) Pain control medications have become easier to
administer. Debulking is a surgical process of removing a substantial part
of the tumor and reducing the pleural thickening; this can provide
significant relief. X-ray therapy has also been successfully used to
control the tumor and the pain associated with it for a while.
Surgery is a common treatment of
malignant mesothelioma. The doctor may remove part of the lining of
the chest or abdomen and some of the tissue around it. Depending on how
far the cancer has spread, a lung also may be removed in an operation
called a pneumonectomy. Sometimes part of the diaphragm, the muscle below
the lungs that helps with breathing, is also removed.
Radiation therapy uses high-energy
x-rays to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation may come from a
machine outside the body (external radiation therapy) or from putting
materials that produce radiation (radioisotopes) through thin plastic
tubes in the area where the cancer cells are found (internal radiation
therapy).
Mesothelioma Research:
There is as yet no known cure for
malignant mesothelioma. The prognosis depends on various factors,
including the size and stage of the tumor, the extent of the tumor, the
cell type, and whether or not the tumor responds to treatment. KMESA has
represented many clients who lived for five to ten years after diagnosis,
most of them in good health for a majority of those years. Some
mesothelioma victims succumb within a few months; the average survival
time is about a year.
X-rays and CT scans are, typically, the first
step towards detecting peritoneal mesothelioma. The actual diagnosis is
typically achieved by obtaining a piece of tissue. The medical procedure
of looking at the peritoneum is known as a peritoneoscopy. It is a
hospital procedure and requires anesthesia. If an abnormality is seen, the
doctor will attempt to obtain a tissue sample - this is known as a biopsy.
The tissue sample will be examined by a pathologist who makes a diagnosis
using microscopic analysis of specialized stains.
There are at least two explanations for how asbestos fibers can get
into the peritoneum. The first is that fibers caught by the mucus of the
trachea and bronchi end up being swallowed. Some of them lodge in the
intestinal tract and from there they can move through the intestinal
wall into the peritoneum. The second explanation is that fibers that
lodge in the lungs can move into the lymphatic system and be transported
to the peritone
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