Treating Mesothelioma

Video Transcript

"The treatment of mesothelioma really depends on both how advanced the mesothelioma is, that is to say what is the stage. Stage four being metastatic disease with the mesothelioma having progressed, having developed or progressed to other sites of the body. And also the patient, typically these patients are older, the average age is sixty, not many patients are in the seventies. And it depends on how active they are, given that the main risk factor for the development of mesothelioma is asbestos exposure. Many of these patients already have significant asbestosis, that is a compromise in pulmonary function. So what we can do really depends on how functional the patient is, how old the patient is, and what other co-morbidity diseases a patient has. Treatment can be as aggressive as what we call tri-modality therapy, where one often utilizes aggressive surgery initially. What's called an extra pleura pneumenectomy where the entire lung and it's covering is removed along with part of the diaphram, and part of the paracardium, that is the covering of the heart. That can be either proceeded by or followed by chemotherapy. and then radiation therapy to the now empty hemi-thorax, the half of the chest that the lung was in. That is the most aggressive treatment. Unfortunately for the vast majority of patients treated in this aggressive manner, that is not curative. And we are trying to devise new strategies to improve that for older patients, patients who cannot tolerate tri-modality therapy, patients with disease that has spread to the other lung, or to the abdomen, or to other organs we would think about various forms of chemotherapy."