mesothelioma

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    Mesothelioma Insurance Claims on the Rise

    ByAlex Strauss

    Insurance companies are seeing a rise in asbestos and mesothelioma insurance claims – even though the incidence of the disease has been gradually slowing. The Reuters News Agency is reporting that two major insurers – Hartford Financial and American International Group, Inc. (AIG) – have recently had to dramatically increase the amount of money they are holding in reserve for mesothelioma and other asbestos cases because of a higher number of claims in recent years.  The shift in funds meant a $290 million shortfall in earnings for Hartford Financial, making investors nervous about the company’s stability.  AIG worried its shareholders by moving $4.1 billion into its reserve fund. For decades before the link to mesothelioma and other illnesses was made known, asbestos…

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    Mesothelioma Not Enough to Blacklist Asbestos

    ByAlex Strauss

    The 141 member nations of the international Rotterdam Convention have once again failed to add asbestos to their list of banned chemicals, much to the disappointment of mesothelioma patients, doctors and researchers worldwide. Asbestos has long been linked to the deadly cancer mesothelioma. It causes an estimated 2,500 new cases of mesothelioma in the U.S. each year and tens of thousands of cases elsewhere in the world.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 125 million people are exposed to asbestos in the workplace and more than 107,000 die each year from mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases.  Although the mineral is now regulated (though not banned) in the U.S., many third-world countries use it as a cheap building material with little…

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    CT Accuracy May Vary for Mesothelioma

    ByAlex Strauss

    A group of French doctors has a warning for people exposed to asbestos and concerned about the possibility of mesothelioma: watch out for false positive CT results. Their new meta-analysis of current radiological techniques found that there is a wide margin in the way CT results are interpreted in cases of cancer in the lungs and chest including mesothelioma. The study may have important implications for mesothelioma, where early, accurate diagnosis is critical. CT (computed tomography) and the newer high-resolution volume CT (HR-VCT) which takes multiple two-dimensional images, are among the most popular imaging modalities for diagnosing and staging malignant pleural mesothelioma. According to the researchers who conducted the study, part of the problem is the lack of specific training in…

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    Employer ‘Duty-Bound’ to Protect Families from Mesothelioma

    ByAlex Strauss

    People who contract mesothelioma or other asbestos diseases because of second hand exposure to asbestos through a company’s employee, have a right to hold the company accountable. An appellate court in Illinois made the decision after hearing the case of a woman who got mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, after years of washing her husband’s contaminated work clothes. Annette Simpkins brought suit against the CSX Corporation, claiming that she got sick because of repeatedly handling the toxic fibers while doing laundry. Her husband, Robert Simpkins, was a steelworker, welder, railroad fireman and laborer for CSX’s predecessor, B & O Railroad.  When Annette Simpkins died in April 2007, her daughter Cynthia took over as plaintiff. The mineral asbestos, used for…

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    Experience Improves Mesothelioma Surgery Outcomes

    ByAlex Strauss

    Mesothelioma patients who are candidates for surgery will have better outcomes and longer survival if their procedure is done in a specialty treatment center by a surgeon experienced in mesothelioma surgery. That is the conclusion of a team of surgeons in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Australia. The group set out to determine if survival statistics for mesothelioma surgery have improved over the years as doctors have gained more experience treating mesothelioma and adjuvant therapies have advanced. They analyzed the surgical treatments and survival results of 540 consecutive patients with malignant plural mesothelioma. The group was divided into two segments of 270 patients each. The first group was comprised of mesothelioma patients who…

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    Major Boost for Mesothelioma Research

    ByAlex Strauss

    Mesothelioma research was given a valuable shot in the arm recently when one of the world’s top research centers for the disease received its second largest donation ever. The $3.58 million anonymous gift to the University of Hawaii Cancer Center will fund studies on ways to treat and prevent mesothelioma, a rare but virulent cancer that is caused by exposure to asbestos. Dr. Michael Carbone, director of the UH Cancer Center, is one of the nation’s top experts on mesothelioma. Dr. Carbone and his team dramatically advanced the understanding of mesothelioma in 2010 with their published study on the mechanism by which asbestos affects the body at the cellular level to trigger the disease. Their research showed that inflammation, caused…

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    Mesothelioma May Masquerade as Ovarian Cancer

    ByAlex Strauss

    Some cases of ovarian cancer in women with a history of asbestos exposure may actually be misdiagnosed peritoneal mesothelioma.  That is the conclusion of scientists from the University of Western Australia who are trying to evaluate a possible link between asbestos and ovarian cancer. Doctors have known of the link between mesothelioma and asbestos for decades.  Over the years, other cancers, including gastrointestinal, kidney, throat and gallbladder, have also been associated with exposure to this toxic mineral.  But, because fewer women traditionally work in industrial jobs and, thus, have less occupational asbestos exposure, the link with ovarian cancer has been harder to prove. Adding to the challenge is the possibility that some cases of peritoneal mesothelioma may have been misdiagnosed as…

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    Radiotherapy ‘Comparable to Chemo’ for Mesothelioma

    ByAlex Strauss

    A recent study has concluded that palliative radiotherapy produces a response rate in malignant pleural mesothelioma that is comparable to chemotherapy. A recent analysis of 54 mesothelioma cases at a hospital in Cheltenham, England found that 43 percent of patients who received palliative radiotherapy according to their hospital’s policy, responded to the treatment. Based on the results of their pre- and post-therapy CT scans, 22 of the 54 mesothelioma patients analyzed experienced a partial response and 1 patient had a complete response. Fifty-seven percent reported some improvement in their symptoms. In an effort to help determine which mesothelioma patients are most likely to respond to radiotherapy, the research team correlated treatment responses with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment…

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    New Blood Test May Detect Mesothelioma Earlier

    ByAlex Strauss

    In the ongoing worldwide quest for an easier and more accurate way to diagnose malignant mesothelioma, one of the nation’s top mesothelioma research teams claims to have found a ‘promising’ new method. The blood test, developed by SomaLogic, Inc. and tested at New York’s Lagone Medical Center, detects the presence and quantity of 19 different proteins (biomarkers) that can be secreted by tumor cells in the early stages of mesothelioma. In National Cancer Institute-funded studies on the new test, researchers used 90 blood samples from patients who had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, and 80 samples from people who had been exposed to asbestos but did not have a mesothelioma diagnosis.  The SomaLogic test accurately detected 15 out of 19 cases…

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    Mesothelioma Outcomes May Be Improved by New Radiation Therapy

    ByAlex Strauss

    There is evidence that a new type of radiation therapy may have advantages over other methods for treating mesothelioma patients after surgery. A marriage of spiral CT-scanning technology and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), helical tomotherapy offers enhanced precision and the ability to ‘sculpt’ the radiation dose to conform to the size and shape of the tumor being treated. Because mesothelioma tumors tend to be irregular in shape and spread out across the membranous mesothelial tissue, this sculpting ability may help doctors deliver just enough post-surgical radiation to kill remaining cancer cells without damaging large numbers of healthy cells. In a recent study on the technology at the University of Paris, a group of French researchers analyzed the treatment outcomes…