e disease is the extraordinarily long period of latency that usually accompanies it. Mesothelioma symptoms generally begin to manifest themselves twenty to fifty years after the hazardous asbestos exposure has occurred. That means the average mesothelioma patient is well over fifty years old and in many cases retired. And, in too many cases, mesothelioma victims are also inflicted with some of the medical frailties that accompany old age, making diagnosis of this rare disease more difficult.
Asbestos fibers are sharp and easily cling to various surfaces such as hair, skin, clothes, and shoes of workers who may track the toxic fibers into their homes subjecting innocent family members to serious illnesses and disease. They may be contained in dust collected on clothing during the course of a workday. Family members of those who are regularly exposed asbestos brought into the home also are at risk of developing malignant mesothelioma.
Symptoms of Malignant Mesothelioma
Pleural mesothelioma being the most common form of the disease, the symptoms most often seen involve the chest. Those may include chest pain, a dry cough, shortness of breath and difficulty with physical exertion. Beyond these physical symptoms are the medical causes. Pleural effusion, a condition that causes the accumulation of fluid in the pleural space, is seen in a majority of pleural mesothelioma cases. Thickening of the pleura is brought on by inflammation and the development of small tumors across the membrane's surface.
Peritoneal mesothelioma is characterized by a swollen abdomen and abdominal pain, usually caused by a buildup of fluid. Bowel obstruction, edema in the legs, and thrombosis in the legs are also seen with this version of malignant mesothelioma. Anemia and loss of appetite may occur.
Pericardial mesothelioma causes chest pain similar to that felt with cardiovascular disease. It can also cause thrombosis in the veins and arteries around the heart, as well as the palpitations and arrhythmia mentioned above. Like pleural mesothelioma it will cause shortness of breath and lack of physical stamina. For all of these forms of malignant mesothelioma, fatigue, sweating, weight loss and difficulty sleeping may also become physical difficulties.
Malignant Mesothelioma Treatment
The nature of the treatment received by mesothelioma patients is directed by the degree to which the disease has advanced. That question is analyzed by medical personnel through the process of staging, a formal protocol that provides a series of benchmarks for the malignancy, the degree to which it has spread, its location(s) within the body and the types of malignant cells that make up the tumor development.
The key question for mesothelioma treatment is whether or not there is a surgical option to remove some or all of the malignant tissue. If the staging diagnosis determines that surgery is feasible, a resection procedure will remove the malignant portion of the mesothelium, or as much as can be removed, and often adjacent tissue that is diseased or threatened as well. With pleural mesothelioma, for example surgical intervention often involves a partial pneumonectomy, which means removing a portion of the lung next to the malignant mesothelium tissue. Surgery to remove portions of the peritoneum in the case of peritoneal mesothelioma may also involve removing portions of the stomach.
In cases where surgical intervention is warranted and performed, a program of chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy usually follows. Depending on the location of the malignancy and whether or not malignant tissue remains in the body, the chemotherapy may be administered via the standard intravenous method or may be applied directly to the targeted tissue during surgery. The two drugs that the FDA has approved for the treatment of mesothelioma are pemetrexed and cisplatin, usually used in combination because they attack different weaknesses in cancer cells.
Techniques have been developed to minimize the damage that radiation therapy does to healthy cells near the malignant areas being targe