Palliative Radiation Treatment Should be Personalized for Mesothelioma Patients
German researcher has found that terminal cancer patients that receive palliative radiotherapy treatment are not benefiting as their oncologists thought they would. This led to the conclusion that while physicians expected to improve the patient’s quality of life they did not take the time to appropriately customize the radiation therapy to the patient. For mesothelioma patients, radiation is often used in a palliative manner to reduce the pain associated with the disease.
Mesothelioma is an aggressive and painful cancer that occurs in individuals exposed to airborne asbestos fibers. Currently there is no known cure for mesothelioma, although the disease can be treated with varying degrees of success through the use of surgical procedures, chemotherapy and radiation.
The traditional therapies of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are often used in concert for multimodal therapy in the majority of mesothelioma treatment plans. Radiation is often the last treatment used in the care of the patient.
Radiation treatment, which uses radiation to kill cancer cells, for end-stage cancer patients is intended to control pain, stop bleeding, and relieve pressure, even though the cancer can no longer be controlled. The expectation is that the patients will maintain a good quality of life until the end.
The study found, however, that terminal patients are spending most of their remaining life undergoing treatments, but only 26% of them reported any pain reduction.
Dr. Stephan Gripp, of the University Hospital Duesseldorf in Germany, believes that excessive radiotherapy in end-stage cancer patients is a reflection of overoptimistic prognoses and unrealistic concerns about radiation damage from the patients’ doctors. The average survival time for mesothelioma patients varies from 4 – 18 months after diagnosis.
He goes on to say that the oncologists are inaccurately projecting the patients life span leading to “unduly prolonged therapy regimens” that are not completed or from which the patient withdraws.
He added that physicians need better methods for estimating how long their end-stage cancer patients will live, as well as recommending that that they use shorter-duration radiation schedules for palliative radiotherapy.
With new research in the field of radiotherapy, including using proton beams, mesothelioma tumors that are often located close to other organs can be targeted with greater precision limiting damage to the surrounding tissue, potentially leading to improved palliative treatment.
