Standard Cancer Drugs Are Ineffective Victims of Mesothelioma, though Photodynamic Therapy Could Provide a Hope
17 June 2009Oncologists and other cancer doctors choose what course of treatment to go with for every patient. The options are endless. There exists no universal treatment regimen for malignant mesothelioma patients. This is because of the relative rareness of the disease, the high mortality rate and low treatment success rate, and the few scientific studies to provide meaningful statistics.
While prospects for patients with mesothelioma have been bleak, doctors have been making progress. Customary treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and the tissue that surrounds it), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) All three methods have problems. Patients with mesothelioma have not responded well to traditional radiation therapy. Researchers are looking for ways of aiming radiation directly at the tumor in hopes that this will result in less damage to healthy tissue.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. This surgery is extensive and it is not clear how much the patient benefits. Common chemotherapy drugs that work on other types of cancer usually do not work on mesothelioma, and different combinations of chemotherapy drugs have been tried without a lot of success. Like radiation, researchers are focusing their work on controlling the physical location of the treatment with an emphasis on the pleural cavity.
Many advanced techniques in cancer treatment are tried on mesothelioma patients because of its high fatality rate. These include biologic therapy such as the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs such as thalidomide. Pemetrexed (Alimta) is a new drug that has shown results in extending life.
Oncologists consider the stage of mesothelioma, the location of the tumor, the patient’s age and state of health at the time. Theres also photodynamic therapy and gene therapy ” two far-out new ways of attacking cancer. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.
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