Mesothelioma

Australia has the world’s highest instance of mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer found in people who have come into contact with asbestos. Dr Malcolm Feigen discusses the symptoms, diagnosis and treatments of mesothelioma.

Transcript

Hello, my name is Dr. Malcolm Feigen, radiation oncologist at the Austin Hospital, in Melbourne. I joined the Editorial Advisory Board of the Virtual Cancer Centre 2 years ago and today I would like to share with you my insights on mesothelioma.

At the Austin Hospital in Melbourne we have been trying to improve the treatment of mesothelioma for many years with some recent successes.

Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer that begins in the lining over the lung, the pleura, in people who have come into contact with asbestos some time in the past, usually 35 to 40 years earlier. Australia has the highest rate for this cancer in the world, which is at present seldom cured.

The first symptoms are difficulty in breathing, cough and chest pain; and a chest x-ray shows something is wrong by fluid building up in one lung or shadows forming on one side of the chest. Draining the fluid and doing a biopsy is necessary to confirm the diagnosis and CAT scans, or more recently PET scans, are used to find out how advanced the cancer is and whether treatment with surgery is possible.

Symptoms can be relieved temporarily by removing the fluid, blocking the pleural space by short surgical procedure and giving pain medication. Many patients obtain more long-term benefit with chemotherapy using a couple of new agents that have mild side effects over the short courses of radiotherapy. Certain patients can be offered more effective treatment with surgery that removes all of the pleural lining or in some cases the whole lining and other bits as well.

We have recently started using chemotherapy before the operation and giving high doses of radiotherapy after surgery to prevent the cancer growing back at the edges over the chest wall, diaphragm and liver; and this can often control the cancer effectively without producing severe side effects.

Only specialised centres can give this complex treatment safely and it’s worthwhile to check with us what can be done before it’s too late. We’re definitely making slight but steady progress and hope to offer better treatment to many more patients in the coming years as the number of new cases are not predicted to fall in Australia until at least 2015.

Thank you for watching. Have a great day.

More information

For more information on mesothelioma, visit Malignant Mesothelioma of the Pleura.