Mesothelioma Treatment Options

No known or reliable cure exists for malignant mesothelioma. However, several treatments are available if the disease is identified at an early stage. The most common treatments are surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Whether a patient is eligible for these and similar treatments depends on the patient’s age and overall health, as well as the extent of the disease. If a patient’s malignant mesothelioma has become too advanced for therapeutic treatment, the physician may instead focus on making the patient comfortable by relieving some of the cancer’s painful symptoms.

If you or a loved one in the Finger Lakes region of New York has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, contact the asbestos injury lawyers of Belluck & Fox, LLP, today. Our mesothelioma attorneys handle asbestos disease cases in every county in New York, including those in the Finger Lakes region. We provide personalized and professional legal representation and can advise you of the legal options available for you and your family.

For more information, use our online contact form or call Belluck & Fox, LLP’s mesothelioma lawyers toll-free at 877-MESOTHELIOMA (637-6843).

Traditional Treatment Options

Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are the three traditional treatment options for Finger Lakes region patients diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma. Physicians will often combine these therapies to maximize a patient’s chance to recover from the disease. For example, “trimodal” therapy – in which all three techniques are employed – is considered the most aggressive and effective approach.

Surgery entails physically removing the patient’s cancer. The specific type of surgery depends on the type of malignant mesothelioma and where it’s located in the patient’s body. Mesothelioma tumors usually are large and difficult to remove completely.

Curative Approaches

A variety of surgical procedures may be used in an attempt to remove all gross disease from a patient, depending on the patient’s specific condition. These include:

• Pleurectomy/Decortication: A Pleurectomy/Decortication removes the pleura, the membrane lining the lungs and chest cavity, without removing the entire lung. This treatment is usually performed on patients in the early stages of mesothelioma and is the most common form of curative surgery.
• Debulking: Debulking attempts to remove as much of the cancer as possible, even where it’s already known that not all can be removed.
• Extra-Pleural Pneuomonectomy (EPP): EPP removes the pleura, diaphragm, pericardium, and lung afflicted with the tumor. EPP is considered a radical therapy and is not frequently performed by most surgeons. EPP patients are referred to centers specializing in these treatments.

These potentially curative procedures are typically used in combination with other treatment options (multi-modal therapy).

Palliative Approaches

Palliative procedures treat the symptoms of mesothelioma to provide relief for the patient, without aggressively treating the disease itself.

• Chest Tube Drainage and Pleurodesis: The goal of chemical pleurodesis is to create an irritation between the two pleural layers covering the lung in order to obliterate the space between the layers where fluid accumulates and to prevent further accumulation of fluid. A variety of agents are used, including talc and bleomycin. As the pleural space is closed, fluid drains out of the chest cavity through a chest tube.
• Pleuroperitoneal Shunt: Pleuroperitoneal shunting is used to manage malignant pleural effusions in patients who have failed chemical pleurodesis, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy uses anti-cancer drugs to kill cancer cells. It may be the primary treatment for mesothelioma, or it may be used as part of a multi-modal approach. Chemotherapy is known as a systemic treatment because the drug enters into the patient’s bloodstream and travels throughout the body killing cancer cells. The drugs may be in pill form or may be injected into the body through a needle.

In addition to killing cancer cells, chemotherapy drugs are designed to restrict the uncontrolled spread of abnormal cancer cells by preventing cancer cells from dividing and multiplying.

Chemotherapy is not considered a “curative” approach for treating mesothelioma. It instead focuses on shrinking existing tumors (usually prior to surgery, in what’s called neoadjuvant therapy), controlling the spread of the cancerous cells, and removing residual cancer cells following surgery (adjuvant therapy).

Chemotherapy drugs can be injected directly into the chest or abdomen to locally treat cancer without spreading harmful effects to other parts of the body. A procedure known as heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy, for instance, involves administering a chemotherapy agent directly into the abdomen after surgical removal of an abdominal tumor. It is believed that combining the drug with heat helps to infiltrate the drug into cancerous tissues and that the heat itself may also damage cancer cells.

More than one drug may be used in chemotherapy. Side effects might result, depending on the drugs, the amount taken and the treatment period. Doxorubicin has been the most widely used single chemotherapy drug, although other newer drugs – including gemcitabine, cisplatin, carboplatin, epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, vinorelbine, paclitaxel, and methotrexate – are now often preferred and usually given in different combinations.

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy uses high-energy X-rays to help destroy cancer cells and shrink tumors. The radiation may come from a machine outside the body (external radiation) or from radioactive materials placed directly in or around cancer cells through thin plastic tubes (internal or implant radiation).  In pleural mesothelioma, it is difficult to irradiate tumor tissue successfully without injuring nearby organs like the lungs, heart, and liver. However, radiation therapy can be very effective in relieving pain in certain situations. Factors impacting the use of radiation treatment include the volume of the tumor and its proximity to vital organs.

Non-Traditional Treatment Options

• Photodynamic Therapy destroys cancer cells by using the energy from light and may also be effective when combined with surgery. Although this therapy is being used experimentally to treat mesothelioma, it has shown promising results in treating other cancers. In the procedure, the patient receives a photosensitizer (a drug making cells sensitive to specific wavelengths of light) that collects in cancerous cells but not healthy cells. Once the cells have been sensitized, fiber optic cables are placed in the body (usually through open-chest surgery) so that the correct frequency of light can be focused on the tumor. This causes the photosensitizer drug to produce a toxic oxygen molecule that kills the cancer cell.
• Gene Therapy is a new treatment currently in clinical trials. This approach targets tumors rather than destroying healthy cells, which is the negative aspect of traditional chemotherapy. In gene therapy, cancer is treated by altering genetic defects that allow a tumor to develop. A “suicide gene” is inserted directly into the tumor, making the cells sensitive to a normally ineffectual drug. The drug is then administered to the newly sensitive cancer cells, and it destroys those cells while leaving the healthy cells unharmed.
• Immunotherapy (or biological therapy) treats cancer by using the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells. This therapy is also known as biological response modifiers (BRMs). Promising clinical studies are underway for immunotherapy, although some harmful side effects have occurred in patients undergoing experimental immunotherapy treatment programs.

Contact Our Finger Lakes Mesothelioma Illness Attorneys Today

If you or a loved one in the Finger Lakes region has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the asbestos injury attorneys of Belluck & Fox, LLP, can help. We handle mesothelioma cases in the Finger Lakes region and throughout New York. Use our online contact form or call Belluck & Fox, LLP’s mesothelioma lawyers toll-free at 877-MESOTHELIOMA (637-6843).