A cure does not exist yet for mesothelioma, but people with the disease can still undergo an assortment of procedures for their mesothelioma or possibly even participate in clinical trials.
The malignant mesothelioma treatment methods most often recommended are surgical procedures, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.
Although these are the most common, you'll find other treatments that are gaining in attractiveness, the bulk of of which remain experimental.
A few of these procedures are gene treatment, immunotherapy, and photodynamic treatment.
There are three separate types of surgery for mesothelioma cancer patients; painkilling surgery, diagnostic surgery, and curative surgery.
Palliative surgical procedures are for the purpose of relieving the pain and calls for completely removing some of the cancer cells.
Nevertheless, this form of surgery does not offer a cure.
The goal of curative surgeries are to remove as much of the cancerous tissue as possible with the hope that it will be enough to cure the individual.
When curative surgery is executed they are frequently followed up with radiation therapy or chemotherapy.
Diagnostic surgical procedures are strictly employed to figure out if cancer in fact is present in an individual or not.
It additionally will help in recognizing its location, if present, and is generally non-invasive.
Medicines used in chemotherapy are normally given intravenously with the aim of exterminating cancerous cells.
Cancerous cells will multiply very rapidly so it is always best to start chemotherapy treatment as soon as possible.
The goal of radiation therapy is comparable to chemotherapy, to kill cancer cells as well as slow the proliferation of mesothelioma cancer cells as much as you possibly can.
It's also called "ionizing radiation" and is ordinarily used after surgery has been finished.
It is every so often utilized as palliative care to reduce the pain associated with the disease.
Photodynamic treatment is normally utilized only if the mesothelioma cancer is localized and is not normally very successful if the cancer has metastasized.
Photodynamic treatment entails giving the patient medication intravenously that makes cancer cells very susceptible to a certain type of light.
A few days after photodynamic treatment the individual is then subjected to this specific light, exterminating the mesothelioma cancer cells that have absorbed the medicine.
Gene therapy is experimental and includes infecting the person with a virus that was altered genetically.
The virus makes its way into cancer cells which results in the production of a protein.
A short while after infecting the patient with the virus, the individual is then treated with a chemotherapy medication that won't be toxic to normal cells, but is created to be deadly to cancer cells.
Immunotherapy tries to fool the patient's immune system into destroying mesothelioma cancer cells.
With active immunotherapy the patient has a portion of their mesothelioma cancer cells completely removed and then turned into a vaccine.
The patient is then injected with the vaccine which will most likely lead to the individual's immune system recognizing the "mesothelioma cell vaccine" as a dangerous substance, and thus identifying the cancer itself as a toxic substance.