Standard Drug Drug Cocktails Not Effective for Mesothelioma
Oncologists and other cancer doctors decide what course of treatment to pursue with every patient. There are many options. There are no one size fits all treatment regimen for peritoneal mesothelioma victims. Mesotheliomas lack of agreed-upon treatment is due to low a treatment success rate, rareness, a high mortality rate and a small number of studies providing meaningful stats.
While prospects for patients with mesothelioma have been bleak, doctors have been making progress. Traditional treatments for cancer are surgery (removing the tumor and surrounding tissue), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) All three methods have problems. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. In hopes to lessen damage to healthy tissue, researches are studying ways to aim radiation right at the tumor.
The mesothelial tissue around the tumor is removed by surgery. This surgery is extensive and it is not clear how much the patient benefits. The usual chemotherapy cocktails effective on other cancers are not effective on mesothelioma, and combinations of chemotherapy agents have been tried, but without much 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. Such treatments include anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide and biologic therapies agent interleukin 2. 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. Two therapies that are extremely cutting-edge in fighting cancer are called photodynamic and gene therapy. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.
