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Posted on Monday, Sep 20, 2010

Female Mesothelioma Patients Live Longer After Surgery

According to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, women tend to develop mesothelioma at an earlier age than men, but they live longer with the disease after surgery.  The study led researchers to conclude that women patients with mesothelioma are good candidates for aggressive treatments.  Currently there is no known cure for mesothelioma, and the average survival time varies from 4 – 18 months after diagnosis.

Mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer typically affecting the lining of the lungs, is primarily caused by exposure to asbestos.  Men tend to develop the cancer more often than women due to the greater presence of men in the kinds of heavy industrial jobs such as ship building, mining and automotive repair where asbestos was prevalent.  Men who worked around asbestos, and brought the fibers home on their clothing, shoes and in their hair, known as second-hand or take-home exposure, may have inadvertently exposed their children and spouses to the deadly toxin.

Physicians are now treating mesothelioma patients whose only exposure came from contact with the fibers that adhered to the clothes of the worker who actually worked with the asbestos products.   Women sometimes develop the disease from laundering the asbestos dust-covered clothes of their family member.

The new study published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, which evaluated the role of gender in survival with mesothelioma, examined the cases of more than 700 patients who underwent surgery at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital between 1987 and 2008 to treat mesothelioma.  Of the patients, approximately 145 were women.

The researchers found that extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP), a surgery to remove a diseased lung and surrounding layer of tissue known as the pleura and one of the major curative procedures performed on patients with mesothelioma, is a treatment that can benefit women.  EPP is considered a radical surgery due to the extensive amount of tissue resection attempted during the procedure and the highly invasive techniques necessary to complete the operation. Serious complications are not uncommon and patients typically face an extended recovery period.