Mesothelioma and Chemotherapy
| |

Mesothelioma and Chemotherapy

ByAlex Strauss

Adding a second round of chemotherapy with the drug pemetrexed can slow cancer progression in patients with pleural mesothelioma, according to a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Malignant pleural mesothelioma, which affects the lining of the lungs (pleura), is one of the toughest cancers for doctors to combat. “The tumor itself is the challenge, as it is practically incurable and hardly treatable,” says Jacek Jassem, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine at the Medical University of Gdansk in Poland. Surgery isn’t appropriate for most patients, and radiation has limited effectiveness. One of the most effective treatments discovered so far is the combination of an anti-metabolite (a class of chemotherapy drugs that interfere with DNA production to halt tumor…

Pleural Mesothelioma and Surgery
| |

Pleural Mesothelioma and Surgery

ByAlex Strauss

In a 2006 article*, thoracic surgeon David J. Sugarbaker, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital stated that the goal of surgery for pleural mesothelioma should always be the complete removal of all tumor tissue visible to the naked eye. A complex disease, an ongoing debate “Because mesothelioma can take on many forms and involve different parts of the lung, people have been comparing apples and oranges for many years” when weighing the pros and cons of surgeries for the disease, says Sugarbaker. “We’re used to asking, ‘Do we perform a more extensive procedure or a more conservative one?’ when it comes to surgery, but that debate doesn’t apply as much to mesothelioma,” he says. “The goal should always be to…