Mesothelioma Cancer

The breathing of asbestos causes lung and pleural cancer, as it has been confirmed in animal experiments and epidemiological researches.

Malignant mesothelioma is a cancer of the mesothelial cells, and has an effect on the pleura and peritoneum in the 80% and 20% of the cases respectively. It generally occurs in people who have been exposed to asbestos in their place of work no less than 15 years prior to the diagnosis, even though at times the ailment has been seen in people with very little to no exposures. If truth be told, the connection among malignant mesothelioma and asbestos exposure was originally described in 1960 by Wagner and colleagues in South African crocidolite miners.

The occurrence of mesothelioma is identified in countries where there is a national registry of this illness. Thus, the figure ranges between 14.2 and 2.5 cases per million in men and women, correspondingly, in the United States, 66 and 7 per million in Australia. In Spain for instance there is no evidence of such work-related infections. According to a research carried out in Catalonia between 1983 and 1990, there was an attributable death rate of malignant mesothelioma per 100,000 cases of 0.83 and 0.47 in men and women respectively. In patients residing in Barcelona and Cadiz with malignant mesothelioma, 62% of the cases were related to work-related exposure to asbestos, while the remaining 38% could be owing to household or environmental exposures. It is a fact that mesothelioma can happen due to environmental exposure to asbestos, as seen in people living close to asbestos mines in regions where the homes were tinted with paint having tremolite.

Malignant mesothelioma customarily advances to demise of patients with a median survival of 7 months. With present facts, neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy nor operation has revealed any development in the diagnosis of these patients. These days innovative treatment are being tested, as the beginning of intrapleural cytokines, photosensitization mesothelioma cell or gene therapy, but with no definite results to date.