Mesothelioma Treatments
Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer. There are many treatment for mesothelioma for the patients. The treatment depends on many different factors like the location of cancer, the stage of cancer, age of the patient, how far the cancer has spread etc. the most used treatment options are radiation therapy, chemotherapy and surgery. There are three main types of surgical treatments. These are Diagnostic surgery, curative surgery and palliative surgery.
The palliative surgery gives symptomatic relief and curative surgery can remove all the cells from mesothelioma but for the proper treatment with curative surgery, the mesothelioma lung cancer or any other cancer should be diagnosed in early stage. In chemotherapy many drugs are used like Alimta and Cisplatin. These drugs are used to destroy the Mesothelioma cells. Cancer cells divide rapidly and these drugs show some side effects. For the patients of peritoneal Mesothelioma a chemotherapy called heated chemotherapy is a choice. This treatment is done by the perfusion of chemotherapeutic medicines in the peritoneum.
Radiation therapy is used to treat the mesothelioma by killing the cancer cells and stopping the spread of cancer. Depending on the mesothelioma symptoms and condition, the patients of mesothelioma are treated with the radiation therapy. There are two types of radiation therapy one is external beam radiation therapy and Brachytherapy. In external beam radiation therapy the mesothelioma cells are killed by the bombardments of radiation beams and in brachytherapy small radioactive rods are implanted in the tumor to give it a strong dose of radiation. Radiation therapy only gives a short-term symptomatic relief.
Pleural mesothelioma can be treated by photodynamic therapy. In this therapy light energy is used to destroy the cells. Another type of treatment is used in which the patient’s own immune system is used to destroy the cancer cells. Active and passive are the two main types of immunotherapy. “Suicide gene therapy” is being developed to treat the patients of mesothelioma disease. Genetic material is used to target the cancer cells. In some cases a combination of treatments is used.
The stage and maturity level of disease effects greatly on the mesothelioma treatment options. Unfortunately the disease is not diagnosed before it reaches at stage III or IV. By treatment the survival time of patient can be increased and it also helps to alleviate the pain. The cancer specialists are working very hard to develop a cure foe mesothelioma. Clinical trials are also being used for the development of the treatment.
