MESOTHELIOMA

2010-06-13T18:43:00.001-07:00

Mesothelioma, is a rare form of cancer that develops from the protective lining that covers many of the body's internal organs, the mesothelium. It is usually caused by exposure to asbestos.
Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and internal chest wall), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity), the heart, the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart) or tunica vaginalis.

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fiber in other ways. It has also been suggested that washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos can put a person at risk for developing mesothelioma.[3] Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking, but smoking greatly increases the risk of other asbestos-induced cancers.[4] Compensation via asbestos funds or lawsuits is an important issue in mesothelioma (see asbestos and the law).

The symptoms of mesothelioma include shortness of breath due to pleural effusion (fluid between the lung and the chest wall) or chest wall pain, and general symptoms such as weight loss. The diagnosis may be suspected with chest X-ray and CT scan, and is confirmed with a biopsy (tissue sample) and microscopic examination. A thoracoscopy (inserting a tube with a camera into the chest) can be used to take biopsies. It allows the introduction of substances such as talc to obliterate the pleural space (called pleurodesis), which prevents more fluid from accumulating and pressing on the lung. Despite treatment with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or sometimes surgery, the disease carries a poor prognosis. Research about screening tests for the early detection of mesothelioma is ongoing.

The mesothelium is a membrane that covers and protects most of the internal organs of the body. It is composed of two layers of cells: One layer immediately surrounds the organ; the other forms a sac around it. The mesothelium produces a lubricating fluid that is released between these layers, allowing moving organs (such as the beating heart and the expanding and contracting lungs) to glide easily against adjacent structures.

The mesothelium has different names, depending on its location in the body. The peritoneum is the mesothelial tissue that covers most of the organs in the abdominal cavity. The pleura is the membrane that surrounds the lungs and lines the wall of the chest cavity. The pericardium covers and protects the heart. The mesothelial tissue surrounding the male internal reproductive organs is called the tunica vaginalis testis. The tunica serosa uteri covers the internal reproductive organs in women.
As discussed previously, mesothelioma takes a long time to incubate within a human body before symptoms may appear and cause suffering to the carrier. To be more specific, it can take fifteen to twenty years for this deadly disease to fully show itself and the damage it has done. This presents a very difficult challenge for doctors and the medical community in diagnosing the disease and in many cases patients with this disease are either not aware that they have it or do not ask the doctor to specifically check for symptoms.
Once mesothelioma has been diagnosed a treatment procedure can be recommended and begun. The correct treatment will depend on a number of factors. They include the location of the tumor, the stage of the disease and how far the cancer has spread in the patient. The recommended treatment for mesothelioma will also depend on the age and overall health of the patient.

The fine fibers of asbestos make it a great source for insulation and a fire retardant however the entry of asbestos into the human body can trigger the onset of mesothelioma. It is widely known now that Mesothelioma is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. Sometimes the fibers enter the body through the lungs by an unsuspecting individual just breathing air containing asbestos fibers. Once they are taken in through the respiratory passages these fibers lodge themselves in the mesothelial cells around the lungs. This can cause direct damage to the lungs by traveling to the ends of their small passages and reaching the pleura area surrounding the lungs.
Once there has been a positive identification and diagnosis of mesothelioma there are a number of different reactions and emotional responses that many patients feel as a result of the unexpected news. The first is often a feeling of complete and utter shock that their work or other related exposure to asbestos such a long time ago has resulted in such a dangerous and serious medical condition.
Please have a look at these possible treatment scenarios.

Good Luck!

Lung Cancer

2010-06-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. This growth may lead to metastasis, which is the invasion of adjacent tissue and infiltration beyond the lungs. The vast majority of primary lung cancers are carcinomas of the lung, derived from epithelial cells. Lung cancer, the most common cause of cancer-related death in men and women, is responsible for 1.3 million deaths worldwide annually, as of 2004.The most common symptoms are shortness of breath, coughing (including coughing up blood), and weight loss.
Cancer of the lung, like all cancers, results from an abnormality in the body's basic unit of life, the cell. Normally, the body maintains a system of checks and balances on cell growth so that cells divide to produce new cells only when new cells are needed. Disruption of this system of checks and balances on cell growth results in an uncontrolled division and proliferation of cells that eventually forms a mass known as a tumor.
The main types of lung cancer are small cell lung carcinoma and non-small cell lung carcinoma. This distinction is important, because the treatment varies; non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) is sometimes treated with surgery, while small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) usually responds better to chemotherapy and radiation.
Cancer occurs when normal cells undergo a transformation that causes them to grow and multiply without control. The cells form a mass or tumor that differs from the surrounding tissues from which it arises. Tumors are dangerous because they take oxygen, nutrients, and space from healthy cells and because they invade and destroy or reduce the ability of normal tissues to function.
Most lung tumors are malignant. This means that they invade and destroy the healthy tissues around them and can spread throughout the body.
The tumors can spread to nearby lymph nodes or through the bloodstream to other organs. When lung cancer metastasizes, the tumor in the lung is called the primary tumor, and the tumors in other parts of the body are called secondary tumors or metastatic tumors.
About one-third of lung cancer patients are diagnosed with localized disease that may be treated by surgical resection. Another third of patients have disease that has already spread to the lymph nodes. In these cases, radiation therapy along with chemotherapy and occasionally surgery is used. The last third of patients may have tumors that have already spread to other parts of the body via the blood stream and are typically treated with chemotherapy and sometimes with radiation therapy for the relief of symptoms. Surgery is the primary treatment for patients with early-stage cancer who are in good general health. The goal of surgery is to totally eliminate all the tumor cells and thereby provide a cure. Even if a tumor recurs after an attempt to remove it, the recurrent tumor often can be removed in a second operation. Surgery is a possibility even if there are multiple tumors, or metastases, provided they are all close together at a site that the surgeon can reach. Unfortunately, lung cancers tend to develop in smokers more than 50 years of age, who very often have other lung disease or serious medical conditions that magnify the risk of surgery.
      The location and size of a lung tumor dictate how extensive the operation must be. Lobectomy — removal of an entire lobe of the lung — is an accepted procedure for removing lung cancer when the lungs are functioning well. The mortality risk is 3 percent to 4 percent, and tends to be highest in older patients. If lung function prohibits lobectomy, a small cancer confined to a limited area can be removed with a small portion of surrounding lung tissue. This is called segmental resection, or wedge resection. Patients lose less of the lung function as a smaller portion of lung is removed. This segmental resection is suitable for only small early stage cancers that are at the edge of the lung and carries a mortality risk of 1.4 percent. If the entire lung must be taken out by pneumonectomy, the expected mortality rate is 5 percent to 8 percent. The oldest patients are at highest risk and recurrent cancer is very common.
      In a majority of cases, either the patient is not fit for surgery or it is not possible to remove the entire tumor because of its size or location. But a number of other treatments are available that can shrink a tumor so that it may be more easily resected or in some cases completely destroy a lung cancer.

    * Radiation therapy, or radiotherapy, delivers high-energy x-rays that can destroy rapidly dividing cancer cells. It has many uses in lung cancer:

    * As primary treatment
    * Before surgery to shrink the tumor
    * After surgery to eliminate any cancer cells that remain in the treated area
    * To treat lung cancer that has spread to the brain or other areas of the body

Besides attacking the tumor, radiotherapy can help to relieve some of the symptoms it causes such as shortness of breath. When used as an initial treatment instead of surgery, radiotherapy may be given alone or combined with chemotherapy. Today, many patients who have a small lung cancer that can be easily reached by an x-ray beam, but who are not candidates for surgery, are receiving curative doses of radiotherapy. These patients may include the elderly, those with chronic heart failure, and those receiving a blood-thinning drug that puts them at risk of surgical bleeding. More recently, a newer technique called Stereotactic Body Radio Therapy (SBRT) is being increasingly used. It involves a multitude of small, focused radiation beams tracking the lung tumor along with its respiratory movement, in typically three to five treatments. This treatment delivers very high doses of radiation therapy to the lung cancer in patients where surgery is not an option.

Most often, radiation therapy is delivered by the external beam technique, which aims a beam of x-rays directly at the tumor. Treatment is given in a series of sessions, or fractions, usually over six weeks. Some studies have obtained good results with fewer side effects when the total radiation dose is given in more fractions over a shorter time. Three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy is a fairly new technique based on a 3-D image of the tumor taken with CT scanning. This image serves as the target for a high-dose radiation beam that automatically changes its shape and size to match the tumor. This method minimizes radiation exposure of nearby normal lung tissue.

In brachytherapy, radioactive seeds are implanted through a thin plastic tube directly into the site of cancer. This may help to relieve severe symptoms but does not cure the cancer.

    * Chemotherapy involves drugs that are toxic to cancer cells. The drugs are usually given by direct injection into a vein or through a catheter placed in a large vein. Often given after surgery to get rid of small groups of cancer cells that may remain, chemotherapy also may slow tumor growth and relieve symptoms in patients who cannot have surgery. Newer biologic agents, which may have fewer side effects than traditional chemotherapy and in some instances may be just as effective, are being used. This treatment is used in all stages of lung cancer and can prolong life even in elderly persons as long as they are in good general health. Some chemotherapy drugs increase damage done to tumors by the radiation treatment of cancer cells. Others keep the tumor cells at a stage where they are most susceptible to radiation treatment, or impair the ability of cancer cells to repair themselves after a course of radiation therapy. Evidence is mounting that a combination of these drugs integrated with radiotherapy is more effective than radiotherapy alone, but there is a substantial risk of serious side effects.
      Chemotherapy causes many distressing side effects, such as severe nausea with vomiting and damage to the white blood cells needed to combat infection, but there now are ways to counter some of these effects. Some lung cancer patients will have to decide whether it is worth suffering side effects and having a poorer quality of life in order to remain alive for a somewhat longer time.

All About Cancer

MESOTHELIOMA

Lung Cancer