Pleural mesothelioma, which is the most common type of asbestos-related cancer, commonly forms on the lining of the lungs. The symptoms tend to occur in the last stages of the disease. There are some essential hints that you need to know about pleural mesothelioma, which can help you to detect the early symptoms of the disease.
- Where the pleural mesothelioma gets the name
It is named for the very location where it initially grows, which is the pleura. It is a soft tissue that covers the lungs.
- How many cases of pleural mesothelioma occur
Pleural mesothelioma accounts for almost 75 percent of all cases of asbestos-caused mesothelioma, which is a relatively rare cancer caused by the exposure to asbestos.
- What the initial symptoms are
The initial symptoms of pleural mesothelioma particularly include chest pain and the shortness of breath. You are also likely to experience no symptoms at all during the early stages of the cancer’s progress.
- What the prognosis is
The life expectancy of someone that is diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma is less than eighteen months, yet some patients may live longer than that. Combing a number of treatments, such chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy, will help patients to live longer with pleural mesothelioma. It often takes twenty years to even fifty years for mesothelioma to develop after the first exposure to asbestos. That is why it is so difficult to diagnoses early occurrence of the cancer. This particular lag time, which is called the latency period, accounts for the fact that why the disease usually affects older people.
How Asbestos Causes Pleural Mesothelioma
After one inhales airborne asbestos, the human body will struggle to remove the fibers which appear lime needle from the lungs. Over long period of time, trapped fibers will mitigate to the pleural lining and cause irritation, genetic damage, and even chronic inflammation. In two ten percent of people who are heavily exposed to asbestos, the trapped asbestos cause pleural mesothelioma by stimulating genetic changes which turn cells cancerous. These dangerous cancerous grow so fast and uncontrollably, which leads to the formation of tumors wrapping around the lungs.
Almost eighty percent of people that are diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma are men that are older than 75 years old. The exposure to asbestos most commonly took place at industrial jobs where men comprised the majority of the employees.
What Are Typical Pleural Mesothelioma Symptoms?
The symptoms of pleural mesothelioma include shortness of breath, pleura pain or chest pain, persistent dry or raspy cough, difficulty swallowing and coughing up blood. Three in four pleural mesothelioma patients have the shortness of breath and more than half report experiencing chest pain. There are four stages of mesothelioma that doctors use to describe cancer progression. For a number of people, unluckily, the symptoms are not quite noticeable until the cancer is in a later stage, which includes stage three and four.
Asbestos fiber can cause the excess fluid to build between the two layers of the pleura, which is a condition called pleural effusion that is present in 90 percent of pleural mesothelioma cases. Although a little fluid is essential, too much will cause breathing difficulty.The extra fluid will put pressure on the lungs, which causes chest pain which worsens when you cough or take deep breaths.
Two layers constitute the lung pleura. The outer layer, which is called the parietal pleural membrane, lines up the whole inside part of the chest cavity. The inner layer, which is also known as the visceral pleural membrane, covers the lungs. A typical pleural mass can develop on either lining and can rapidly spread to the other lining or layer. As the tumors develop on the pleural surface, they will grow to form sheath-like mass right around the lung.
How Pleural Mesothelioma is Diagnosed
Pleural mesothelioma is sometimes hard to diagnose. In as much as many diseases of the lungs and respiratory system resemble the symptoms of P, most doctors may mistake it for the flu or pneumonia without the need for extensive testing.
The diagnostic process commences when a doctor, often the primary care physician, tests the initial symptoms. Chest pain and breathing problem warrant chest X-ray, usually the first test to show fluid or tumors occurring around the lungs. Referral to a pulmonologist, general hospital, or oncologist is common after abnormal X-ray result. Further imaging, tissue biopsies, and blood tests are used to corroborate a pleural mesothelioma diagnosis.
The Prognosis of Pleural Mesothelioma
Throughout the process of diagnosing the cancer, doctors will analyze the expected course and the result for the disease, which is known as your prognosis. Providing an apt prognosis is challenging for doctors because the disease is so complex, and each person responds quite differently to treatment given. The most essential factor in a pleural mesothelioma prognosis is the stage of the disease at diagnosis. Staging denotes the process doctors go through in describing the cancer’s progression. An early-stage cancer detection offers a better opportunity of long-term survival than a late-stage cancer.
Patients that are in otherwise good health condition and can still carry out normal routine tend to respond better to therapy and treatment, which is another important factor to survival rate.
The histology, or make up, or a mesothelioma cancer cell significantly impacts prognosis. Patients with the most common cell subtype, which is called epithelial, live an average two hundred days longer than patients diagnosed with the least common subtype. Biphasic and sacromatoid subtypes of mesothelioma have shorter rate of survival, commonly around 6 to 8 months
Sarcomatoid cells are known as the most aggressive mesothelioma cells in terms of its rapid growth and the resistance to treatments and therapy. Biphasic mesothelioma is a mix of sarcomatoid and epithelial cells. The ratio of both cells decides on how a biphasic patients responds to treatment and how long they are likely to live. The higher ratio of epithelial cells usually translates into longer survival rate. Some other important factors to prognosis include age, smoking history, and sex. Survival rates are higher for female, patients younger than 55, and nonsmokers. If doctors actually spot a cancer in the fluid around the lungs, the life expectancy is affected.
