Most doctors treating people suffering from Mesothelioma, a rare malignant cancer, would suggest surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. While this form of Mesothelioma treatment has been prevalent for a while now, some breakthrough treatments are also surfacing. The efficacy of these new Mesothelioma treatment options is yet to be tested, but the initial results are encouraging, to say the least.
One such breakthrough treatment for Mesothelioma is termed as Multimodality therapy. Multimodality basically refers to multiple modes of treatment. Thus, someone being administered a multimodality mesothelioma treatment might be undergoing a combination of two or three treatments in tandem. Surgery is a common thread in almost all multimodal treatments and is accompanied by radiotherapy, chemotherapy or both. Multimodality therapy as a treatment for mesothelioma should be administered only to those patients who are strong enough to bear the repercussions of multiple therapies at the same time. There are many advocates of this form of Mesothelioma treatment and it has received a considerable amount of criticism as well. This form of treatment for mesothelioma has drawn a lot of flak because the average increase in life expectancy of the patient is not usually congruent with the risks associated with the treatment. There is always a sense of risk associated with making a patient undergo multiple cancer prevention treatments at the same time.
Another mesothelioma treatment that can be considered an improvement over regular chemotherapy is the Heated Intraoperative Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIIC). HIIC is the brainchild of Paul Sugerbaker and was developed in the Washington Cancer Institute. The process is pretty similar to a regular surgery followed by chemotherapy. The surgeon first removes as much tumor as possible by way of surgery and then the patient’s abdomen is subjected to Chemotherapy. The only difference between this form of treatment for mesothelioma over multimodal therapy is that the chemotherapy agent is heated between 40 and 48 degrees while inside the abdomen. This agent is profused/injected into the abdomen for a time period ranging between 1 hour to 2 hours. There are two benefits of heating the agent: First, the agent penetrates deeper into the infected tissues to prevent the spread of cancer into underlying tissues and second, the agent is more potent against malignant cells when it is heated.
Finally, immunotherapy is one more mesothelioma treatment that is gaining popularity. The results of this type of treatment for mesothelioma are yet to be determined and have shown considerable variation across patients. Immunotherapy is the practice of bolstering the immune system of the patient to fight against malignant cancer on its own. Though this mesothelioma treatment works at the root cause of the cancer, administering it successfully has been tricky for doctors in the past. Building the immune system of a patient whose cancer has been detected late is not easy and the patient might lose precious time in an attempt to do so. On the other hand, this mesothelioma treatment is relatively more successful in those patients whose cancer was detected at an earlier stage. Some people have even shown the average life expectancy rise by up to 50% as compared to other forms of mesothelioma treatment. The biggest factor that goes in favor of this mesothelioma treatment is that it entails almost no side effects when compared to other forms of mesothelioma treatment.