Mesothelioma Treatments And Their Effectiveness
The success or failure of mesothelioma treatments basically depends on the phase of cancer at the time of exposure. Several treatment methods including traditional and modern are followed by doctors. Sometimes a combination of two or three conventional therapies including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy are used by physicians. Treatments enhance the lives of more than two-thirds of stage-1 and stage-2 patients by five years or more. Surgery has been doing the same in around 16% of the cases.
Surgical procedure involves removing the cancerous growth through incisions. Decortication or pleurectomy is the commonly used surgery in which the removal of chest lining is done. The surgery which removes the lining around the lungs, inside the chest, the hemi-diaphragm and pericardium is called the Extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP). This kind of surgery is not widely used.
In spite of all its side effects, chemotherapy has proved to be the best of all the present mesothelioma treatments imparted. It is a less aggressive treatment than radiation or surgery. The process is usually long drawn out, physically and emotionally difficult for the affected.
Immunotherapy, which strives to improve the immune response, has yielded vacillating results so far. Heated Intraoperative Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy, in which drugs are heated to a certain degree of temperature before being administered, helps improved penetration of anti-cancer drugs. Researches are on to find alternative and more effective mesothelioma treatments.
The extent of the disease, the age of the patient and his or her overall health are taken into consideration before starting treatment. Before starting the process, the patient needs to find out the best suitable treatment, its costs, advantages or disadvantages of the treatment strategy followed, risk factors and chances of survival. In cases where aggressive mesothelioma treatments are impossible, palliative treatment, which treats only the symptoms and not the root cause, is followed.
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