Longer Survival in Mesothelioma Patients Attributed to Advances in Treatment and Increased Medical Knowledge
A new study by Australian medical researchers at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney shows that mesothelioma patients are living longer today than they were 20 years ago. Their increased longevity is credited to new treatment techniques and more experienced doctors.
Mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer most often affecting the lining of the lungs, is highly aggressive and is resistant to many cancer treatments making it a difficult disease to treat effectively. The average survival time for mesothelioma patients typically varies from 4 – 18 months. With ongoing research to find a cure for mesothelioma, recent breakthroughs and increased knowledge among medical professionals has improved both the survival time and the quality of life for some mesothelioma patients.
Primarily, patients seek treatment at a mesothelioma specialty facility, such as Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA where the International Mesothelioma Program (IMP) has been established, to ensure they get the latest treatment options. The researchers say that with an uncommon disease such as mesothelioma, treatment at a medical center that specializes in asbestos-related disease and has handled many mesothelioma patients is a key to a better outcome.
The study categorized 540 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma who underwent surgery between 1984 and 2008 into two groups of 270 patients each. One group consisted of patients who underwent surgery before September 1999. The other group included mesothelioma patients treated after that date.
In analyzing the groups, the researchers observed that patients in the later group tended to live approximately 13 months after diagnosis compared to 9 months for the first group. They identified four factors that independently influenced patients’ survival: treatment by experienced surgeons who had handled more than 100 mesothelioma cases, the type of surgery, the cellular subtype of the cancer and the use of pemetrexed chemotherapy.
The patients in the second group, with the longest survival, were more likely to undergo an extrapleural pneumonectomy, to have received post-operative radiation and chemotherapy consisting of pemetrexed combined with cisplatin or carboplatin, and often had the epithelial subtype of mesothelioma. Epithelioid mesothelioma is the most common and treatable histological subtype and is diagnosed in more than half of all cases.
“It is likely that the improvement is due to a combination of factors, such as an increased aggressive surgical approach, familiarity with the surgical procedures, introducing chemo-/radiotherapy and accumulated clinical experience,” the Australian researchers said.
The study can be found in the June 2011 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery and Cardiovascular Surgery.
