Previously, medical professionals treated asbestos mesothelioma with the same methods used for other kinds of cancer. These courses of treatment include chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy. One thing about asbestos mesothelioma is that the treatment could either be curative or just palliative, depending on how advanced the illness is.
Patients suffering fro asbestos mesothelioma are not typically diagnosed early enough to be able to qualify for remedial surgery. Thus, many patients are resigned to getting the palliative treatment options for asbestos mesothelioma, the purpose of which is to help alleviate the painful symptoms and improve the quality of their lives as well as considerably increase their life spans.
Surgery is still the principal treatment option for asbestos mesothelioma. Patients with asbestos mesothelioma whose illness was discovered before it had the chance to spread are the most suited for curative surgery which will remove the tumors. Depending on the patient?s overall health and diagnosis, surgery for asbestos mesothelioma may be curative or just palliative. It could also fall in between the two types in case the surgical operations are successful. Surgery for asbestos mesothelioma is typically succeeded by other forms of treatments like radiation or chemotherapy in order to kill any cancer cells that may have remained.
On the other hand, chemotherapy can be used as a palliative treatment for asbestos mesothelioma. Chemotherapy is performed by injecting drugs which will kill the cancer cells and minimize the tumor?s size. Although major advancements in chemotherapy have improved its effects, its success rate is still low for asbestos mesothelioma. In fact, a mere 15-20% of asbestos mesothelioma patients will see a significant improvement. Fortunately, there are now various ongoing clinical trials that are trying to combine different drugs in one single treatment course to treat asbestos mesothelioma and such trials are showing tremendous potential for success.
Radiation therapy, while effective for other types of cancer, is not an efficient treatment option for asbestos mesothelioma which is proven to be resistant to it. However, radiation has been effectively used as a palliative treatment for easing the symptoms of asbestos mesothelioma.
While doctors are unable to agree on which asbestos mesothelioma treatment course is best for the illness, many of them are in agreement that combining the different methods can greatly increase a patient?s chance of survival. This combination of treatment is known as multimodal therapy and researchers are incessantly conducting tests and experiments to determine the best combination of treatments for asbestos mesothelioma.
Despite the fact that traditional methods like surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are still the most commonly used treatments for asbestos mesothelioma, there are also several new kinds of therapy that are being developed. One is Immunotherapy which attempts to manipulate the immune system of the patient in order to make it attack the tumors. Another alternative therapy to asbestos mesothelioma is photodynamic therapy which exposes the cancer cells to some specific lights and photosensitizing drugs. A third kind of alternative treatment for asbestos mesothelioma is Gene therapy which tries to correct flawed genes which may possibly result in cancerous changes.
Source: http://lungmesothelioma.net/treatment-options-for-asbestos-mesothelioma/
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