Mesothelioma Survival

Mesothelioma survival rate is usually poor once the disease has been diagnosed with certainty. This form of cancer, usually caused by asbestos, is very difficult to diagnose precisely until the late stages.

The cause of this disease can be either direct or indirect exposure to asbestos. Direct exposure is usually during ones employment. Jobs which are likely to lead to exposure include boiler-making and lagging, ship-building, carpentry and joinery, electrician work, plumbing and pip-fitting, and even teaching, management and fire-fighting. Indirect exposure to asbestos can occur when washing the work clothes of someone who works with the chemical, for example.

Survival can be improved by treatments, which might include radiation, chemo-therapy, immunotherapy and surgery. Combinations of treatments usually prove more effective than single treatments. For example one patient might have radical surgery to remove most of the tumor, followed by targeted radiation and chemo-therapy to act on any of the tumor which remains.

Another option available to many patients is clinical trails. These test new treatments and most patients can be matched with at least one trial. Different trials have different requirements for entry. Some trials might only take a patient who has had no prior treatment of any kind, where as another trial might only take those for whom all standard treatments have already been found to be ineffective.

The reason that a prognosis for the disease is usually poor is not that the disease itself is so fast-moving, but that an accurate diagnosis is often impossible until the late stages of the disease, when a patient typically only has 18 months to survive. The symptoms which might include chest pain and difficulty breathing as well as pains in various parts of the body could easily be caused by other less problematic diseases.

Although the statistical survival rates are poor, some people have survived for more than twenty years after a diagnosis.

Mesothelioma survival rates are not closely correlated with the degree and length of exposure to asbestos.

For more info see Mesothelioma Prognosis

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 8:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized, mesothelioma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.