Chemotherapy Drug Cocktails Offer Little Chance against Mesothelioma
Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment choose what type of treatment to go with to each patient. The options are endless. There is no one size fits all treatment course for pleural mesothelioma cancer victims. This is because of the relative rareness of the disease, the high mortality rate and low treatment success rate, and the few scientific studies to provide meaningful statistics.
Mesothelioma patients have historically had a bleak outlook, but doctors have recently made progress. Treatments for cancer are traditionally surgery (taking out the tumor and surrounding tissue), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) Each one of these methods have problems. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. Researchers are looking for ways of aiming radiation directly at the tumor in hopes that this will result in less damage to healthy tissue.
The mesothelial tissue around the tumor is removed by surgery. This surgery is extensive and it is not clear how much the patient benefits. Most chemotherapy medication that work on other cancers typically do not work 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 include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. Pemetrexed (Alimta) is a new drug that has shown results in extending life.
Before acting, oncologists review the stage of mesothelioma, position of the tumor, and age and health status of the patient. Two exotic ways of attacking mesothelioma are gene therapy and photodynamic therapy. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.
