Thursday, September 9, 2010

Mesothelioma Treatment And Its Effectiveness In The Present Context

December 23, 2009 by Heidi Wingrain  
Filed under Cancer

Various factors like the level of infection, the area of infection, the extent of contamination, the condition of the affected cells, the patient’s age, his overall health etc have to be considered for mesothelioma treatment. The patient should be made aware of his treatment process before it is started.

Mesothelioma treatment methods are wide and varied. The common ones practiced are surgery, radiation and medication. Removal of cancer cells are done through surgery whereas use of powerful drugs is involved in medication or chemotherapy. Malicious cells of cancer are destroyed using high energy x-rays or other energy beams in the process of radiation. As the case demands, physicians sometimes use a combination of two or more of these techniques.

Blood tests are not highly successful in analyzing the kind of cancer, whereas procedures like thorascocopy, video assisted thoracic surgery, mediastinoscopy and laproscopy are used to identify the problem. The actual mesothelioma treatment will begin after proper diagnosis.

For patients with comparatively mild infection, surgeries for removal of the cancer from its roots are resorted to. Palliative surgical procedures like chest tube drainage and pleurodesis, thoracoscopy and pleurodesis, pleuroperitoneal shunt and pleurectomy treats the symptoms of the disease rather than the cancer itself. Chest tube drainage and pleurodesis is the most common palliative treatment, which removes the pleural effusion from the affected areas.

For removing the disease in its totality aggressive healing methods are used. Pleural mesothelioma comprises of more than three-fourths of total mesothelioma cases. Decortication is the method used to remove tumor pleural mesothelioma patients who are in stage 1 and stage 2. The lung is not removed in this process. In case the tumor cannot be removed without taking out the lung, pneumonectomy is used. Here the removal of the lung is done. Adequate tests and analysis are done before conducting the surgery.

Chemicals are used in chemotherapy and it destroys cancerous cells from multiplying. It also assists in preventing the spread of infection, shrinking existing tumors and removing remnants of the disease once the surgery is done. Where there is no hope for a cure, palliative chemotherapy is resorted to. In radiotherapy, penetrating rays of energy or particle streams are employed. This is used along with surgical procedures. In a nut shell, mesothelioma treatment aims at removing the cancer and it is a comprehensive technique.

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