Mesothelioma Prognosis
The overall prognosis for individuals with mesothelioma is not very good. The
disease has among the lowest five year survivability rates among different cancers and remains
extraordinarily difficult to treat. While research is ongoing and our knowledge
of the disease is definitely increasing faster than it ever has, doctors know an
actual cure is still years away. However, large variabilities exist in many
mesothelioma patients and there are people who have lived full lives after their
diagnoses.
Mesothelioma Prognosis: Statistics
When mesothelioma is examined in purely statistical terms, the
prognosis figures are discouraging.
Pleural mesothelioma typically presents in an advanced
stage of progression with a ten-to-fourteen month lifespan
expectation from diagnosis.
Peritoneal mesothelioma often presents with a slightly
more optimistic lifespan expectation and patients surviving
two to five years are not uncommon. However, after five
years, statistics show survivability dropping to well below
thirty percent.
Statistics, however, do not tell the whole story. There are a variety of
factors in the development of a patient’s mesothelioma prognosis and subtle
differences among these factors can have a dramatic impact on the course the
disease will take. The statistical models used in mesothelioma often miss the
extraordinary differences between a person’s stated prognosis/diagnosis and the
way in which the disease actually impacts his or her life. While rare, it is not
unknown for an individual to live for ten or sometimes even twenty years after a
diagnosis of mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma Prognosis: Biology of the Disease
The most important disease-specific prognostic factors for patients with
mesothelioma involve the
form of mesothelioma as presented and thehistological subtype of the presented disease. Of the two major forms of
mesothelioma, pleural mesothelioma generally presents with a worse prognosis
than peritoneal mesothelioma does. The physiological reasons for this difference
are not completely understood, but a major factor is the histological aspect of
the cancer. Pleural mesothelioma presents about fifty percent of the time with
an epitheloid histologic subtype, twenty percent of the time with sarcomatoid
subtype and the remaining thirty percent is the biphasic subtype, which is a
combination of the previous two subtypes. Peritoneal mesothelioma presents in
the vast majority of diagnoses with the epitheloid subtype. This is significant
because epitheloid mesothelioma responds more favorably to
treatment than sarcomatoid
mesothelioma or biphasic mesothelioma does. Thus, with the majority of
peritoneal cases featuring the most treatable histological subtype, one would
expect for it to have a better overall prognosis. Conversely, with only half of
pleural cases involving the most treatable subtype, one would also expect a generally
worse prognosis.
Mesothelioma Prognosis: Patient Status
Along with the biological aspects of mesothelioma as presented, another set
of important prognostic factors includes the
stage of the disease at diagnosis, the health of the patient and his or her
age. All three will have a major impact on life expectancy and the future course
of the disease.
Stage of the Disease
The stage of disease at diagnosis is a crucial factor in the development of
the patient’s prognosis. As with all forms of cancer, early detection is
important, but this is especially true of mesothelioma. Because mesothelioma
generally resists curative treatment, doctors can manage the disease more
efficiently if they have caught it in its early stages. The diffuse nature of
the disorder means advanced tumor progression will invade large areas of tissue,
making treatment even more difficult. Mesothelioma presents with symptoms shared
by a number of other diseases and often goes undiagnosed because of these
similarities. An early diagnosis is absolutely crucial if one hopes to control
the disease.
Read more info on mesothelioma prognosis at:
| 
