Standard Cancer Drugs Are Ineffective Mesothelioma Patients, though Photodynamic Therapy May Be a Hope
Cancer doctors decide what type of treatment to prescribe for their patient. There are numerous options. There exists no standard treatment regimen for pleural mesothelioma patients. Mesotheliomas lack of agreed-upon treatment is due to low a treatment success rate, rareness, a high mortality rate and a small number of studies providing meaningful stats.
The prospects for mesothelioma patients have been grim, 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. Patients with mesothelioma have not responded well to traditional radiation therapy. Researchers are looking for ways of aiming radiation directly at the tumor in hopes that this will result in less damage to healthy tissue.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. This surgery is extensive and it is not clear how much the patient benefits. The usual chemotherapy cocktails effective on other cancers are not effective on mesothelioma, and different mixtures of these drugs have not been successful. As with radiation, research is going toward controlling the physical location of the treatment with emphasis on the pleural cavity.
Many advanced techniques in cancer treatment are tried on mesothelioma patients because of its high fatality rate. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. The new drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) has shown good results in extending life with mesotheliomas..
Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Patients afflicted with mesothelioma are benefitting in these clinical trials.
