Breaking Ground in Peritoneal Mesothelioma Treatment
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Breaking Ground in Peritoneal Mesothelioma Treatment

ByHolly Zink

Researchers from Spain are trying to understand just how effective a multi-modal therapy is at treating mesothelioma in the abdomen. The treatment is called cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Or, CRS-HIPEC for short. Mesothelioma that is found in the abdomen is called peritoneal mesothelioma. It is caused by the ingestion of asbestos fibers. Those tiny asbestos fibers become stuck in the abdomen. After 20 to 50 years, these fibers can cause inflammation and mutations in the healthy cells in the abdomen. These mutations can cause these cells to form tumors in the abdomen. Patients diagnosed with MPM have longer life expectancy than those with other types of mesothelioma. Some studies report patients live up to 5 years after treatment….

Unresectable Peritoneal Mesothelioma Becomes Operable After Bi-Directional Chemotherapy
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Unresectable Peritoneal Mesothelioma Becomes Operable After Bi-Directional Chemotherapy

ByAlex Strauss

French researchers have successfully operated on a man with unresectable peritoneal mesothelioma after treating him with bi-directional chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for unresectable peritoneal mesothelioma. Most mesothelioma patients have chemotherapy by IV infusion. But some cancer centers now offer another chemotherapy delivery method. Intraperitoneal chemotherapy bypasses the bloodstream. It lets doctors put higher doses of cancer-killing medicine at the site of a tumor. The French team combined the two types of chemotherapy in one patient. It shrunk the patient’s unresectable peritoneal mesothelioma tumor enough to perform surgery.  Two Types of Mesothelioma Chemotherapy With IV chemotherapy, medicine travels to the tumor through the bloodstream. It is one way of treating unresectable peritoneal mesothelioma. One drawback of IV chemotherapy…

Peritoneal Mesothelioma Rates Higher in Italy’s Asbestos-Producing Regions
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Peritoneal Mesothelioma Rates Higher in Italy’s Asbestos-Producing Regions

ByAlex Strauss

Some Italian workers are paying a high price for Italy’s former position as the top European producer of asbestos. According to a new study in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, both men and women who lived and worked in areas of heavy asbestos production are far more likely than their peers elsewhere in the country to contract peritoneal mesothelioma. Peritoneal mesothelioma is the rarer form of a very rare cancer. While the more common pleural mesothelioma occurs in the membranes around the lungs, peritoneal mesothelioma starts on the membrane that surrounds abdominal organs. Like all forms of mesothelioma, it is asbestos-related, hard to treat, aggressive, and usually lethal. To get an idea how prevalent peritoneal mesothelioma is in Italy…