Cancer doctors choose what kind of treatment to administer to each patient. There are many options. There exists no standard treatment regimen for mesothelioma patients. 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), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) All three methods have problems. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. 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. 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. Such treatments include anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide and biologic therapies agent interleukin 2. The new drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) has shown good results in extending life with mesotheliomas..
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. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.