Most Cancer Treatments Do Little to Help Victims of Mesothelioma, though Gene Therapy May Be a Promising Alternative
Oncologists choose what course of treatment to prescribe to their patient. The options are endless. There exists no standard treatment course for asbestos cancer sufferers. This is due to the cancers high mortality rate, rareness, low treatment success rate, and small number of studies to provide meaningful statistics.
Mesothelioma patients have historically had a bleak outlook, but doctors have recently made progress. Customary treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and the tissue that surrounds it), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) All three methods have problems. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. Researches, concerned about damage to healthy tissue, are looking for ways to aim radiation directly at tumors.
Surgery takes out the mesothelial cancerous tissue around the tumor. The surgery is difficult and challenging, with unknown effects or benefits to patients. Common chemotherapy drugs that work on other types of cancer usually do not work on mesothelioma, and different mixtures of these drugs have not been successful. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.
The high-mortality rate for mesothelioma patients means cutting-edge techniques for cancer are tried out. Such treatments include anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide and biologic therapies agent interleukin 2. Pemetrexed (Alimta) is a new drug that has shown results in extending life.
Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Two therapies that are extremely cutting-edge in fighting cancer are called photodynamic and gene therapy. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
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