Mesothelioma Treatment

Mesothelioma Cure

While there is currently no cure, those diagnosed with mesothelioma have many options regarding their cancer.  Commonly, patients opt to undergo treatments to fight the cancer. Moreover, individuals may have the option to participate in clinical trials. Although clinical trials do not come without risk, patients get the chance to test new treatments and medications before they are recommended for public use. Many promising drugs and therapies have emerged from clinical trials and those involved may find relief from symptoms and even a prolonged life expectancy thanks to the trial.

Multi-modal treatment is another approach that proves to be instrumental in combating mesothelioma. A multi-modal treatment combines two or more treatment options, either completed at the same time, or one after another, in order to treat a disease. Doctors often recommend this option as it has yielded promising results in the past. A multi-modal treatment example from medical journal, Chest, states that a 52 year old man diagnosed with stage I malignant pleural mesothelioma underwent an extrapleural pneumonectomy followed by chemotherapy and finally radiation to the chest wall. The patient is currently alive and shows no disease two years after his surgery. Multi-modal therapy has made great strides in mesothelioma treatment and has increased survival rates for patients.

Knowing that there is no cure for mesothelioma can be scary and discouraging for patients and their loved ones, but survivor stories continue to arise inspiring and giving hope to those battling cancer.

Mesothelioma Surgery

In regards to mesothelioma, there are three types of surgery – diagnostic, curative andpalliative.

Some surgeries may fit into more than one of the categories above. For example, a thoracotomy procedure can be used to confirm a diagnosis of mesothelioma, but it can also be used to relieve symptoms of the disease as well as remove cancerous areas.  It is important to note that with many surgery options, only curative surgeries can potentially remove all cancerous tumors from a patient.

Some surgery options include, but are not limited to, brachytherapy, pneumonectomy,extrapleural pneumonectomy,  thoracoscopy and thoracotomy.  While there are many surgeries, the best defense in the fight against cancer is to catch mesothelioma in its earlystages when surgeries are still a viable option. Unfortunately, thanks to its long latency period, mesothelioma is not usually detected until the cancer has advanced to later stages when surgery is not an option.

Success Rate

Surgery success rates are high for fluid-draining procedures such as thoracentesis. One of the best results of such procedures would be improved breathing. Fluid causes compression in the lungs and shortness of breath. Eliminating such fluid restores the breathing process. However, while this procedure certainly helps improve quality of life, it does not eliminate or cure the patient of the actual cancer.

Palliative surgery deals mainly with reversing the pain and discomfort that tumors yield; they are not performed as a curative measure.  Palliative surgery has a very high success rate because it is not curing the cancer, just simply aiming to improve the quality of life of a patient by relieving painful symptoms.

Conversely, as the name implies, curative surgery is intended to remove a localized mesothelioma tumor and the problems it causes.  Unfortunately, the success rate for curative surgery is low because the cancer is rarely detected before it can spread making it inoperable. If early detection of the disease were more common, the success rate of curative surgeries would increase dramatically. Mesothelioma is nearly always diagnosed in the late states of the disease making very few patients eligible for curative surgery.

Mesothelioma Radiation

Radiation therapy employs X-rays which target the cancerous cells and completely destroy them. Radiation therapy does not entail internal exposure of any kind. Rather, the radiation is “sprayed” outside the body through an external beam. This beam directly focuses on the cancerous cells and can have a positive effect on reversing the presence of the cancer. Radiation is highly popular as a form of mesothelioma treatment since it can reverse cancer cell growth.

In many ways, the process is no different than having “traditional” X-rays taken. Obviously, the employment of radiation to treat cancer will require far more treatment sessions than merely taking photos. The length of time each procedure requires may be a bit lengthy as well.

A more specialized form of radiation treatment is Brachytherapy. This procedure revolves around exposing the internal abdomen or chest cavity with radiation to kill off the actual cancer cells. Such a procedure is commonly employed when the patient may not be physically able to handle surgery.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is considered the most well-known form of cancer treatments. It entails using oral, or injected drugs such as Alimta or Cisplatin to kill rapidly growing cancer cells. With mesothelioma, the drugs have been known to be directly injected into the chest cavity or the abdominal region. Whether or not chemotherapy is the right path to take will depend upon the stage of the patient's mesothelioma. In some cases, chemotherapy can be the primary treatment while in other cases it is used as a supplement to other treatments.

A newer form of chemotherapy is called Heated Intraperitioneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC) and may be promising for those diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma. This treatment, performed following surgery uses an intra-abdominal lavage made up of chemotherapy agents heated between 111 and 114 degrees Fahrenheit.  The purpose is to eliminatemetastases too small to be taken out by surgery.

Physical Therapy

All forms of standard cancer treatment (chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries) will require physical therapy or rehab. This is because the body will need to be strengthened once again after the serious impact of the treatment.

Photodynamic Therapy

Photodynamic therapy utilizes the energy of light to kill cancer cells while leaving healthy cells untouched.  During treatment, photosensitizer drugs are given to mesothelioma patients making the cells extremely sensitive to light.  The cells, being treated with the drug are subjected to lights of certain wavelengths, triggering them to create a toxic form of oxygen that in turn destroys any cancerous cell in the area.

A few days after injection of the medication, the patient is exposed to light with a predetermined wavelength. As the cancerous cells absorb the light, they begin to produce the toxic oxygen which ends up killing the cells. Photodynamic therapy also damages blood vessels inside tumors handicapping them so they are no longer available to absorb nutrients.

Gene Therapy

When a non-infectious virus is altered genetically, it produces a particular protein to specifically target cancerous cells making them more vulnerable. This process is calledgene therapy. When cancer cells are extra vulnerable due to gene therapy, they become more susceptible to the drugs used in chemotherapy.

One main form of gene therapy is called “suicide gene therapy.” This popular form of treatment forces the cancerous cells to produce substances that cause their own death. While this procedure has produced some encouraging results, as of now it is only available in clinical trials.

Immunotherapy

Another form of experimental treatment is immunotherapy. In this treatment, a patient’s immune system is basically deceived into killing cancer cells. The immune system cannot tell the difference between a healthy cell and a cancerous one therefore the concept of this therapy is to aid the immune system into recognizing that the antigens found on cancer cells are foreign and as a result, they attack them.

The two main types of immunotherapy are passive therapy and active therapy.  In active immunotherapy, the cancerous mesothelioma cells are taken from a patient and treated in a lab turning them into a vaccine. Once the vaccine is injected back into the patient, if the procedure worked correctly, the immune system would recognize the vaccine as an injurious substance, correlating the cancer as harmful as well, thus killing off the cancer cells.

Passive immunotherapy uses immune system components like antibodies to combat the disease. In a healthy immune system, antibodies are created in order to bind themselves to foreign cells as a means of attacking them. With passive immunotherapy, the cancerous cells are removed from a patient and processed into antibodies that recognize the cancer antigens. These antibodies are then placed back into the body and bind themselves to cancerous cells making them targets to be destroyed.

Hormonal Therapy

Hormonal therapy is a treatment that supplements, blocks or replaces the hormones in the human body. This is not to be confused with hormone replacement therapy that is used to relieve menopause symptoms in females.

Hormones aid in the growth of cancer so this therapy works to block hormones or hormone receptors in order to treat cancers such as mesothelioma.  A benefit of hormonal therapy is that it treats the entire body. It is often used following surgery to decrease the recurrence of the cancer.

Ozone Therapy

Ozone therapy uses ozone, an extremely active form of oxygen that many people believe to have healing powers. Ozone, part of the earth’s upper atmosphere plays a role in absorption of harmful radiation from the sun. Therefore those who back the ozone therapy believe it has the ability to kill harmful microorganisms that thrive in low-oxygen environments.

The theory is that when ozone is administered to mesothelioma patients, their oxygen levels increase dramatically resulting in the damage of these microorganisms believed  to cause the cancer.  Ozone can be administered one of five ways.

• Externally – a blast of ozone is passed over exposed lesions or tumors
• Injection – ozone can be injected into either a muscle or beneath the skin into the affected area
• Injection in vein or artery – done with an IV
• Autohemotherapy- blood is taken from a patient, exposed to ozone and then transfused  back into the patient
• Rectally 

Alternative Therapies

Alternative therapies are any nontraditional therapy used to complement standard mesothelioma treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. These natural approaches use vitamins, herbs, peptides, amino acids, and other natural supplements that are not toxic. Since alternative treatments are used more so for symptom relief, and are not curative measures, they are often referred to as complementary treatments.

Other forms of alternative therapies includeyoga, Reiki, cupping, and massage therapy. Studies show that as many as 70 percent of cancer patients supplement their traditional treatments with an alternative therapy to reduce stress and relieve cancer causing symptoms. Also, these methods may be use as a palliative measure when standard treatment is no longer an option for a patient suffering in the later stages of mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma Resources

Have further questions regarding mesothelioma? We have answers. If you or someone you know could benefit from the insight of an experienced medical professional, fill out this form to download our free mesothelioma E-book written by Michael Todd Sapko MD, PhD.  Inside you’ll find answers regarding symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of this debilitating disease.