How is pleural mesothelioma treated?

At present there is no known cure for most people with mesothelioma.

This is a very slow-growing type of cancer, and when it is diagnosed it has normally been present in the pleura for many years. It is usually found in several different areas of the pleura, which means that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to remove with surgery.

Currently, treatment aims to relieve any symptoms caused by the mesothelioma and provide as good a quality of life as possible. This approach, active symptom control, is the standard way of treating mesothelioma.

It is thought that chemotherapy may help some people by reducing symptoms such as a cough, breathlessness and chest pain, and so improving their quality of life. However, at the moment chemotherapy is not a standard treatment for mesothelioma.

Some researchers believe that chemotherapy may help some people with mesothelioma to live for one or two months longer, but it cannot cure the mesothelioma completely.

Chemotherapy can cause side effects and it is not yet known whether it is better or worse at treating the symptoms of mesothelioma than medicines to treat each symptom (eg painkillers or medicines to ease breathlessness). Also, it is not known whether it can prolong life more than the standard treatment.

Some doctors believe that the side effects of the chemotherapy may outweigh the small benefits that are seen with the current chemotherapy drugs given for mesothelioma.

The only way to find out whether chemotherapy is helpful is to do a trial like this one, which compares chemotherapy with standard mesothelioma treatment.

CancerBACUP’s has a section that gives more details about mesothelioma and its treatment.