Photodynamic Therapies May Give Promising Options for Treating Mesothelioma in Comparison to Radiation Therapy
Cancer doctors decide what course of treatment to administer with every patient. There are numerous options. There exists no one size fits all treatment course for peritoneal mesothelioma sufferers. This is due to the cancers high mortality rate, rareness, low treatment success rate, and small number of studies to provide meaningful statistics.
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), chemotherapy (poisoning cancerous cells) and radiation (killing cancer cells with radiation) There are problems with all three. Mesothelioma patients treated with traditional radiation therapy have not responded well to it. Researches, concerned about damage to healthy tissue, are looking for ways to aim radiation directly at tumors.
Surgery removes the mesothelial tissue around the tumor. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. Most chemotherapy medication that work on other cancers typically do not work on mesothelioma, and different mixtures of these drugs have not been successful. As with radiation, research is going toward controlling the physical location of the treatment with emphasis on the pleural cavity.
Many advanced techniques in cancer treatment are tried on mesothelioma patients because of its high fatality rate. These techniques include a biologic therapy called the agent interleukin 2 and anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide. A new drug that has shown results in improving survival is pemetrexed (brand name Alimta).
Before acting, oncologists review the stage of mesothelioma, position of the tumor, and age and health status of the patient. Two exotic ways of attacking mesothelioma are gene therapy and photodynamic therapy. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.
