Mesothelioma Treatment Options

There is no known or reliable cure for victims of malignant mesothelioma. But, if it is identified at an early stage, several treatments are available. The most common approaches to mesothelioma are surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.

Whether these and similar treatments are appropriate for a patient will depend upon the patient’s age and overall health and the stage of the disease. If a patient’s malignant mesothelioma has become too advanced for therapy to help, then the appropriate step may be to focus on relieving some of the cancer’s painful symptoms to make the patient more comfortable.

If you or a loved one in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis or St. Lawrence County, New York, has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the North Country asbestos injury attorneys of Belluck & Fox, LLP, can help. We handle mesothelioma cases from the North Country and all of New York. We provide personalized and professional legal representation, and we can advise you of the legal options available for you and your family.

Use our online contact form or call Belluck & Fox, LLP’s mesothelioma attorneys toll-free in the North Country at 877-MESOTHELIOMA (637-6843) for expert assistance today.

Traditional Mesothelioma Treatments

North Country mesothelioma patients face three traditional treatment options: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Physicians often will use a combination of these techniques to maximize a patient’s chance of success in recovering from the disease. “Trimodal” therapy, in which all three are employed, is the most aggressive, and effective, approach.

Surgery

Your North Country doctor may counsel you about physical removal of the cancer from your body. The specific type of surgery would depend on the type of malignant mesothelioma and its location in the body. Mesothelioma tumors usually are large and difficult to remove completely.

Depending on the patient’s specific condition, any of a variety of procedures may be employed in a surgical attempt to eliminate cancerous growth or other disease. These include:

• Pleurectomy/Decortication. A pleurectomy/decortication is a procedure in which the membrane lining the lungs and chest cavity, the pleura, is surgically removed without removing the entire lung. This is usually performed on patients in the early stages of mesothelioma, and it is the most common form of curative surgery.
• Debulking. Debulking is surgery to remove as much of the cancer as possible, though it’s understood that not all can be removed.
• Extra-pleural Pneuomonectomy (EPP). EPP is the removal of the pleura, diaphragm, pericardium, and the whole lung on the side of the chest with the tumor(s). EPP is considered a radical therapy, and most surgeons perform this operation infrequently if at all. EPP patients are referred to centers specializing in this procedure.

These procedures are considered “potentially curative” and are typically used in combination with other treatment options (known as multi-modal therapy). Some additional therapies are discussed below.

Palliative Therapies

Palliative procedures treat the symptoms of diseases like mesothelioma and provide relief from the pain without dealing with the underlying cause of the patient’s suffering.

• Chest Tube Drainage and Pleurodesis. Chemical pleurodesis is employed to prevent further accumulation of fluid between the two layers covering the lung. The procedure irritates the tissue covering the lungs and obliterates the space between the layers. As the pleural space is closed, a chest tube drains the chest cavity.
• Pleuroperitoneal Shunt. Patients who have not responded to chemical pleurodesis, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy may be candidates for pleuroperitoneal shunting. This therapy can provide effective palliation in patients with a trapped lung or in those for whom other treatments have failed.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy, the use of anticancer drugs to kill cancer cells, may be used as the primary treatment for mesothelioma, or it may be used as part of a multi-modal approach. Because the drug is introduced into the patient’s bloodstream and travels throughout the body, chemotherapy is referred to as a “systemic” treatment. Chemotherapy drugs may be swallowed as a pill or injected into the body through a needle.

Chemotherapy drugs kill cancer cells and prevent them from dividing and multiplying, thereby stemming the spread of the disease.

Chemotherapy is not considered a “curative” approach for the treatment of mesothelioma. Instead, the goal of chemotherapy is to shrink existing tumors (usually prior to surgery, in what’s called “neoadjuvant therapy”), control the spread of cancerous cells, and eliminate residual cancer cells after surgery (adjuvant therapy).

Chemotherapy drugs can be injected directly into the chest or abdomen to treat cancer cells there without harming the body elsewhere. In a procedure called “heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy,” for example, the chemotherapy drug is administered directly into the abdomen after a surgeon removes as much of an abdominal tumor as possible. It’s thought that the drug and heat together aid infiltration of the drug into cancerous tissues and that the heat itself may also damage cancer cells.

To effectively treat mesothelioma, chemotherapy may involve more than one drug. Depending on the drugs, the dosage and the length of treatment, the patient may experience side effects.

Historically, doxorubicin has been the most widely used chemotherapy drug. Newer drugs, including gemcitabine, cisplatin, carboplatin, epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, vinorelbine, paclitaxel, and methotrexate, are often preferred now and are usually administered in various combinations.

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy destroys cancer cells and shrinks tumors with high-energy x-rays. The radiation may be administered via an x-ray machine (external radiation) or via radioactive materials placed directly in or around cancer cells through thin plastic tubes (internal or implant radiation).

It is difficult to irradiate pleural mesothelioma tumors successfully without injuring nearby organs, such as the lungs, heart, and liver. However, radiation therapy can be very effective in relieving pain in some patients. Factors that may affect the use of radiation treatment include the size of the tumor and its proximity to vital organs.

Non-Traditional Treatment Options

• Photodynamic Therapy. This approach kills cancer cells with light energy. Although photodynamic therapy is in the experimental stage for mesothelioma, it has shown promising results in patients with other cancers, and it’s thought that it may be effective when combined with surgery. In the procedure, the patient receives a photosensitizer drug, which makes cells sensitive to specific wavelengths of light and which collects in cancerous cells but not in healthy cells. Once the cancer cells have been sensitized, fiber optic cables are placed in the body (usually through open-chest surgery) so that the appropriate frequency of light can be focused on the tumor. This causes the photosensitizer drug to produce a toxic oxygen molecule that destroys the cancer cell.
• Gene Therapy. Clinical trials are currently testing gene therapy in cancer patients. This treatment targets tumors instead of destroying healthy cells, which is the negative aspect of traditional chemotherapy. In gene therapy, cancer is treated by altering the genetic defects that allow tumors to develop. A “suicide gene” is inserted directly into the cancer tumor, which makes its cells sensitive to a normally ineffectual drug. When the drug is administered to the newly sensitive cancer cells, it destroys those cells but leaves the healthy cells alone.
• Immunotherapy (or biological therapy). This therapy theoretically uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells. Though it is not yet obtainable, promising clinical studies are underway for immunotherapy. Another name often applies to this therapy — biological response modifiers (BRMs). Problems have included harmful side effects in patients involved in clinical trials of immunotherapy treatment programs.

Contact Our North Country Mesothelioma Attorneys

If you or a loved one in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis or St. Lawrence County, New York, has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the North Country asbestos injury attorneys of Belluck & Fox, LLP, can help. We investigate mesothelioma cases from the North Country and all of New York. We provide personalized and professional legal representation, and we can advise you of the legal options available for you and your family.

Use our online contact form or call Belluck & Fox, LLP’s mesothelioma attorneys toll-free from the North Country at 877-MESOTHELIOMA (637-6843) for expert assistance today.