Mesothelioma Cancer Treatment
Mesothelioma that has become malignant can be difficult to treat for quite a few reasons. As with all cancers, the disease becomes more and more difficult to treat as it progresses. In addition, because mesothelioma can remain undiagnosed for decades, doctors often do not discover the disease until it has reached advanced stages. Adding to this difficulty are the facts that mesothelioma does not usually respond to typical cancer treatments, and the fact that it effects the lining of vital organs means that surgical options can be very difficult. Finally, treatment can be made more difficult because of the demographics of mesothelioma victims, with a large majority of patients being men over the age of 50, where advanced age makes some more radical treatments too dangerous.
All of this means that even newly diagnosed mesothelioma patients sometimes are given a very bad chance of recovery by their doctors. Statistics on such issues can be difficult to acquire, but some British doctors and scientists have suggested that some 10 will live five years or longer. For patients in the first stage, 50% live for at least two more years. But doctors can be wrong, and a mesothelioma diagnosis is not necessarily a death sentence. Famed scientist Stephen Jay Gould lived with peritoneal mesothelioma for nearly 20 years. Eventually, he died from another kind of cancer.
There are four stages of malignant mesothelioma, which measure how far the disease has progressed. How a patient's mesothelioma is treated depends largely on which stage he or she is in when the disease is found.
Stage I: Localized mesothelioma that exists only in the lungs, the diaphragm or the pericardial lining.
Stage II: Advanced mesothelioma that has spread into the lymph nodes of the chest.
Stage III: Advanced mesotheioma that has spread into the wall of the chest, the center of the chest, the lining of the heart and the diaphragm. Stage III malignant mesothelioma may or may not have spread to the lymph nodes.
Stage IV: Advanced mesothelioma that has spread far from the chest and abdomen into other organs.
All of this means that even newly diagnosed mesothelioma patients sometimes are given a very bad chance of recovery by their doctors. Statistics on such issues can be difficult to acquire, but some British doctors and scientists have suggested that some 10 will live five years or longer. For patients in the first stage, 50% live for at least two more years. But doctors can be wrong, and a mesothelioma diagnosis is not necessarily a death sentence. Famed scientist Stephen Jay Gould lived with peritoneal mesothelioma for nearly 20 years. Eventually, he died from another kind of cancer.
There are four stages of malignant mesothelioma, which measure how far the disease has progressed. How a patient's mesothelioma is treated depends largely on which stage he or she is in when the disease is found.
Stage I: Localized mesothelioma that exists only in the lungs, the diaphragm or the pericardial lining.
Stage II: Advanced mesothelioma that has spread into the lymph nodes of the chest.
Stage III: Advanced mesotheioma that has spread into the wall of the chest, the center of the chest, the lining of the heart and the diaphragm. Stage III malignant mesothelioma may or may not have spread to the lymph nodes.
Stage IV: Advanced mesothelioma that has spread far from the chest and abdomen into other organs.
posted by Ezyplan | 8:49 PM
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